


Training Montage

by atamascolily



Series: Inheritance [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Botany, Character Study, Force Training, Force Trees, Force Visions, Gen, Irony, Jedi Training, Meditation, Snakes, dagobah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-02 13:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13318815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Life on Dagobah with Yoda wasn't what Luke expected. The planet itself is a hell realm, and he doesn't exactly enjoy his training. But he does learn a lot about what it means to be a Jedi - in spite and because of his peculiar teacher.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea long is Luke spends training with Yoda. It feels like it ought to be a few weeks at the very least, though I don't know if the other canon events support that. (It depends on how long you think the _Millenium Falcon_ spent in the asteroid field, attached to the Star Destroyer, traveling to Bespin, etc, etc.) 
> 
> Luke's preference for Yavin IV is a nod to the Jedi Academy he sets there after ROTJ in the Legends canon. 
> 
> Yoda's line about setting up what you like vs. what you don't like is from the Hsing Hsing Ming (Faith in Mind), a poem by Zen master Kanchi Sosan.

Luke Skywalker hated everything about Dagobah from the very beginning. He was pretty sure Dagobah hated him right back.

It wasn't just his inauspicious landing, though that didn't help. It bothered him that the sensors had failed so unexpectedly at the most critical moment possible; they'd never done that before, and he'd had his X-wing checked by a tech back on Hoth a week or so before the evacuation. Luke had been to some inhospitable places since he joined the Rebel Alliance - hell, he _grew up_ on a place so antithetical to human life, they wouldn't survive without machines extracting scraps of moisture from the air - but he had never bungled a landing so badly before. He'd done better during a blizzard on Hoth, with howling winds flinging ice crystals in every direction. 

It wasn't bragging for him to say he was a good pilot; he knew he was one of the best in the Rebellion, and they wouldn't put him in charge of Rogue Squadron if they thought otherwise. It made no sense that he would fail so spectacularly on arrival to this jungle swamp hellhole. It was especially puzzling that nothing was wrong with the ship now when he tested it - the sensors worked fine, or at least they would work fine if the X-wing wasn't jammed halfway into a giant mud puddle. It would make sense if they were broken, but they weren't--or at least they weren't anymore. It didn't make sense. Luke hated things that didn't make sense.

His piloting skills saved his neck when the sensors gave out, but he shouldn't have _needed_ them to save his neck in the first place. It was pure luck - or was it? - that put him so close to Master Yoda's home; it wasn't as if Ben Kenobi's ghost had given him precise coordinates or anything more specific than the name of the system. It must have been the Force guiding his hand, the same way it guided him during the run against the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin.

The Force might lead him where he needs to go, but the Force was also kind of a bitch, Luke thought, not for the first time.

_Artoo was right to be skeptical of this place. I should have listened to him instead of being so overconfident. I was the fool for thinking this was going to be a NICE planet._

That was another reason to hate Dagobah. No sooner had he staggered out of the X-wing's hatch onto what passed for high ground than the little astromech droid tumbled into the swamp and got himself eaten by an ominous aquatic reptile of massive proportions. Fortunately, the creature's digestion was ill-equipped for inorganics, and Artoo was summarily expelled. Otherwise Luke would have been denied a companion during all of his subsequent trials here.

Luke had never seen whatever-it-was again, and he didn't care to. It hadn't liked Artoo, but he suspected it would appreciate human beings just fine. If it swallowed Luke, it would get a taste of lightsaber in the gut, but he preferred not to get up close and personal with it if he had a choice. Since going head to head with a many-tentacled dianoga in the Death Star trash compactor and nearly drowning, Luke had made a point of staying out of strange waters. Not that any place on Dagobah looked inviting enough for a dip. 

Artoo had been designed to withstand exposure to the vacuum of space, so a brief soak in could in several meters of dirty water barely slowed him down. Luke just hoped he could say the same of his X-wing in that muck. It was bad enough to be here now; he hoped he wouldn't be stuck here forever because his ship was irreperably damaged by this miserable excuse for a world.

Maybe growing up on a desert world gave him some blind spots. He certainly hadn't envisioned anything like _this_ place.

After the better part of two decades on Tatooine, the Rebel base on Yavin IV was a revelation. It'd been his first time on a different planet (okay, technically it was a moon) since they hadn't made it to Alderaan after all. He'd been staggered by the sheer heaviness in the air - all that water, just waiting to be collected! Except that here nature did it for you and it fell from the sky at regular intervals - usually during the mid-afternoon - into convenient little pools and hollows in the landscape.

For someone from Tatooine, where water was literally currency, it was like moving into a gold mine - gold that you could also drink, bathe, or water your plants with. Just _existing_ there made him feel rich.

There hadn't been much time for Luke to explore, but he'd loved every minute of his time there: the tall trees looming over him, so unexpectedly and overwhelmingly _green_ ; giant colorful insects and iridescent butterflies; the mysterious squawks and chitterings of larger creatures hidden in the shadows.

_Someday when all this is over, I am going to go back there. I could live my whole life in a place like that._

Hoth hadn't been too bad. Okay, that was a lie born out of nostalgia and desperation - he hadn't actually been too thrilled by Hoth at the time - but it was tolerable, as far as worlds went. As long as he accepted the fact that he was never going to feel truly warm no matter how many layers he piled on his body, he'd been all right. There'd been a lot to do, and plenty of friends to do it with, and that helped keep his mind off the cold. In some ways, it wasn't all that different from being on Tatooine: a harsh, mostly uninhabited world, full of things that were trying to kill you (but none of them, at least until the very end, were Imperial soldiers, and that counted for a lot when you were one of the most famous heroes of the Rebellion at the tender age of nineteen).

There'd been a few other worlds scattered in between Yavin and Hoth, of course, but he'd spent a lot more time in the regulated and controlled atmosphere of starships and fighters than he had planetside. Besides, the Rebellion prospered best in the rough spots, the grey areas, the uninhabited zones of the galaxy, not its garden spots. The nicer, more temperate worlds tended to have people on them and that was exactly where the Rebel Alliance avoided setting their Very Top Secret bases. And it wasn't like his duties as Commander left him with much time for sightseeing, anyway....

But it didn't matter. Luke was pretty sure that no matter how many planets he visited in his lifetime, Dagobah would always rank at the bottom of the list. It was impossible, of course, but sometimes Luke wondered if Yoda had chosen his place of exile with the deliberate intention of making him suffer. If so, it was working perfectly.

Like Yavin, Dagobah was full of life and moisture, and like Hoth, it was mostly uninhabited, but that was where the similarities ended.

On Dagobah, it rained constantly, but never in short, predictable showers as on Yavin. Here, the downpours lasted for days, endless streams of big fat drops that made their way into everything, and he was soaked to skin through all of it. Even on the days when it wasn't raining, the humidity was so thick that he was consistently damp, and his sweat pooled on his skin instead of evaporating away. The constant moisture was like being wrapped in a big, sweaty embrace - and never being able to pull away.

And of course, he never saw the sun, ever. Even after the worst snowstorms on Hoth, the clouds would clear and he could see blue sky above him again, the light brightening his spirit, even if it was too weak to physically warm him. No such luck with that on Dagobah.

The only place he was ever dry was in Yoda's cramped excuse for a shelter - Luke couldn't bring himself to call it a house. He had to crawl on his hands and knees to get through the door and the ceiling was too low for him to stand fully upright. So he crouched by the fire in his rare free moments and tried to ignore the aching cramps in his legs and back that inevitably resulted. Occasionally, he forgot where he was and knocked his head against the ceiling. Not only did it hurt like hell, his flailing seemed to amuse Yoda tremendously and made Luke resent his master even more.

And then there were the snakes. They were everywhere - draping themselves on rocks and tree roots, gliding through the tangled mazes of branches, wrapped around Artoo when he was hooked up to the charger and radiating heat. Even in Yoda's hut there were snakes, climbing over everything and getting into anything left unattended. Fortunately, most of them were relatively harmless constrictors and not actively poisonous. But it was essential to watch your hands and feet lest you startle one unexpectedly, as their bites hurt quite a bit. It was not uncommon for Luke to wake to them crawling on him during the night. He was careful never to harm them, of course, but it was a sensation he never, ever got used to.

And of course, there was Yoda. Master Yoda. They'd gotten off on the wrong foot at the very beginning, and never really recovered from it. Every time Luke thought he had a breakthough, that he might have pleased the tiny, wizened Jedi, he was proved wrong, again and again.

_To be fair, I shouldn't have pulled a blaster on him. But he should have told me who he was right from the start. Poking through all my things without asking, taking my food, stealing a lamp, beating Artoo with a stick - what kind of behavior is that?_

Apparently, it had been a test - and one he'd completely failed. He hadn't been patient, kind, accepting or open enough, apparently. He'd been so caught up in his own preconceptions of what a Jedi Master should look like, he hadn't realized one standing right in front of him. That hurt.

 _Everything_ for Yoda was a test, it seemed. "I won't fail you," Luke had promised at the outset of this whole mad endeavour. Yet he'd done nothing _but_ fail since then.

Failure was not a novel experience to Luke, but with Yoda he couldn't seem to do anything right. Luke was used to learning quickly, and basking in the accolades of his teachers and peers; he'd rarely been challenged like this before. A teacher like Yoda, who never seemed to be satisfied with anything Luke did, was a new and jarring experience for him.

Yoda hadn't even _wanted_ to take Luke as a student. He'd had to beg, and even then, Yoda had hesitated. That rankled, too. _What else do you have to do besides teach me, Yoda? Were there very many people competing for the honor of being your student? Why am I not worthy?_

_If I'm too old, why didn't you come for me sooner? I would have jumped - I would have LEAPT at the chance to leave Tatooine and get away from moisture farming! Why are you holding my age against me? Why was I good enough for Ben and not for you?_

It occurred to Luke briefly that Ben might not have the best track record as a teacher - after all, his student, Darth Vader, had murdered Luke's father and gone on to slaughter the entire Jedi Order for an encore. And there was also the fact that Ben was, technically speaking, dead. Luke wasn't sure how his old mentor's ghost was still around - probably the Force had something to do with it - but it didn't seem to be a predictable or steady existence. Ben Kenobi showed up on his own time, with his own cryptic instructions, which had saved Luke's life several times over by now; there didn't seem to be much Luke could do to influence or control it.

_But training with Ben has got to be better than training with Yoda. I mean, Ben showed me how to use the lightsaber with that remote thingy. That was fun. I blocked those bolts when I couldn't see them. I pulled the lightsaber to me in the wampa's cave on Hoth. Ben never made me feel incompetent or useless when he spoke to me. Ben never made me feel like I was wasting his time. Ben WANTED me to come train with him._

Luke hadn't intentionally vocalized these thoughts to Yoda, but somehow the little Jedi seemed to know what he was thinking. _The Force again, probably_. Or maybe Luke was just really bad at masking his expressions. In any event, his reaction was always the same: a smack with his stick and a lecture about "preferential mind".

"To set up what you like against what you don't like - disease of the mind it is, hmmph, yes! As long as you remain in one extreme or the other, you will never be one with the Force!"

 _How is preferring a teacher I can work with a disease? I don't get it,_ Luke thought, but he knew better than to tell Yoda that.

It wasn't that Yoda was entirely lacking in humor. In fact, he was constantly laughing, usually at Luke when Luke wasn't trying to be funny, or at some deep private joke he had no intention of sharing with his apprentice.

 _To be fair, I do look ridiculous,_ Luke had to admit. _Or at least, I certainly FEEL ridiculous most of the time_. But Yoda took it a step further by picking at every sentence, taking even the simplest idiomatic phrases literally. This forced Luke to watch his words carefully lest he be dragged into some stupid argument he hadn't even wanted to have in the first place. Forget any other part of training - the sheer mental effort of a conversation with Yoda was exhausting.

If Luke hadn't been so naturally curious, he would have retreated to a sullen silence after a few days of Yoda's company. As it was--

\--it was just hard.

_I can't believe Ben didn't tell me that Jedi training was going to be like this. Then again, if he had told me, I don't know if I would have come._

He grimaced. That was definitely a lie and he knew it. He wanted to be a Jedi more than anything else in the world. That was why he was here, after all, on this godforsaken planet in the middle of nowhere, taunted by this little green alien who had somehow mastered this mysterious power. Who just might be the only person in the entire galaxy who could teach Luke now that Ben Kenobi was dead.

 _Ben says Yoda was his teacher, but I can't imagine it. I just can't imagine it at all._ He knew many alien species were long-lived compared to humans, but Yoda claimed he'd been teaching Jedi for eight hundred years. This seemed incredible to Luke, given how spry and agile he was. Then again, that would explain why his teacher seemed so senile at times... and why he was so stubbornly set in his ways.

_Of course Yoda would hide out here. No Imperial fleet would ever believe a sentient life form could live HERE. Or maybe he was so irritating that they just gave up looking for him and hoped he'd never come back._

The food was terrible, too. Luke had several weeks worth of rations in his gear - dry and tasteless, but nutritious - but Yoda insisted that Luke eat his food instead. "Real food it is, hmmph, yes." It was certainly fresher, but it didn't taste much better than the army rations and it gave Luke indigestion to boot. This was probably due to physiological differences, since Yoda didn't seem to have any problems, but it didn't make Luke feel any better or more well-disposed to his host.

Even when he did the preparation and cooking, it was under Yoda's watchful eye, and that didn't make the end results any better. If anything, it felt even worse to spend so much time on such an unsatisfying meal.

If it weren't for Artoo's cheerful, inquisitive whistles, Luke might have gone mad. As it was, he was lonely and unhappier than he'd ever been since he joined the Rebellion. And since packing up and leaving was out of the question, there was only so much the little droid could do to comfort him.

It was lucky that Artoo was an exceptionally well-adjusted character, even for a droid. A prima donna like Threepio would never have been able to handle the conditions here. Luke wasn't sure if he was grateful Threepio wasn't around or if Threepio was the only sentient being in the galaxy that could give Master Yoda a run for his money when it came to annoying details of semantics. _Maybe they'd just argue forever and leave me alone,_ Luke thought with a flush of irritation. Though given how his master had smacked Artoo with his walking stick, he doubted Yoda would go down quietly.

As quickly as it arose, his irritation faded. He was suddenly ashamed, though he wasn't sure why.

 _Much anger in him. Like his father,_ Yoda had observed on that first, disastrous day. That still hurt. His father was a good man - a strong Jedi and a powerful one - Ben and Yoda had both agreed on that. Why was anger such a problem?

_What's wrong with adventure and excitment? What was wrong with wanting to get the hell off Tatooine? What's wrong with wanting to live my life to the fullest instead of watching it pass me by on some barren rock in the middle of nowhere?_

_Well here I am, having an adventure after all. It just doesn't look like what I thought it would. My fantasies did not include being lectured all the time by a small green alien who could crush me if he felt like it with the energy field that holds the whole universe together._

Somehow, he never doubted Yoda's strength in the Force. That, at least, had been exactly as advertised. Though the idea of Yoda wielding a lightsaber - with a blade that was taller than he was - seemed utterly ludicrous to even contemplate. _Not that I've even touched my lightsaber once since I've gotten here._.

_I was prepared to work hard. I just didn't expect this to hurt so much._

And he hadn't liked the look in Yoda's eyes when the Jedi master told him to prepare to be afraid.


	2. Chapter 2

He woke every morning before dawn to the sound of Master Yoda banging pots and pans in the kitchen, while something dark and brown and mercifully caffeinated bubbled in a pot over the fire. Luke helped himself to a cupful of the nameless brew and drank, trying to gather his bearings. It helped a little to settle his jangled nerves, but he always felt adrift and disoriented, as if he wasn't quite awake yet. Except it hurt too damn much to be a dream - more like a nightmare. 

Before they ate, they sat silent and still in the darkness until the cloudy sky outside lightened and it was time for breakfast at last. Yoda showed him how to fold his legs properly and sit cross-legged in meditation, following the movement of his breath while he faced the blank wall and stared at nothing in particular. 

"Understand you must, the true nature of mind. It is the only way," had been his cryptic explanation for the practice.

"How does doing nothing help me with the Force?" Luke had asked, as he tried to work the ache out of his muscles from staying in one position for so long. 

Yoda tsked as if the answer were obvious. "How do you expect to feel the Force when your mind is so busy, hmmm?" He picked up Luke's mug in one hand and waved it in front of his apprentice's face. "Like your mind, this is. When it is full, nothing new can enter it." To illustrate his point, he poured more dark liquid in until surface tension alone was keeping it from spilling over the rim.

"Only when your mind is empty, yes... quiet... still... can you hear the Force inside you. Otherwise, you hear only your own thoughts and you mistake them for wisdom. Ha! True wisdom comes from the Force." 

Luke wasn't entirely sure about this, but he didn't argue. He quickly came to look forward to these silent periods, because it was one of the rare portions of his training where he wasn't actively screwing up. Sure, it was boring to sit and look at the wall for an hour, but although Yoda might critique his posture afterward, he never said anything during the meditation period itself. 

And over time, Luke began to notice changes. The endless buzz and chatter of thoughts in his mind was quieter. Calmer. The thoughts still came in an endless, rushing stream, but now he was aware of the stream's existence; now, he could choose whether to get caught up in the flow or step (oh so briefly) out and watch the river from the shoreline. 

Breakfast itself was slimy porridge with unidentifiable bits in it. Yoda didn't seem to eat meat or anything fleshy - mostly strange herbs, leaves, and unappetizing-looking roots - so he hoped it wasn't anything too terrible to contemplate. Luke barely looked at it, just spooned it into his mouth and swallowed with as little chewing as possible. He didn't want to know what was in it, but it was warm and filling enough, and relatively tasteless. As long as he didn't think too much about it, it was fine. 

After breakfast came the chores. These includes washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, gathering firewood, re-filling the cistern with clean water from the spring. Yoda never seemed to bother, but Luke made sure to boil or filtered it before he drank anything, which involved some extra work to make sure there was always something potable to hand. The last thing that he needed on top of every other indignity was an attack of dysentery. Probably a fully trained Jedi like Yoda could use the Force to stay healthy - or perhaps it was just a quirk of his alien physiology - but whatever it was, it wasn't something Luke had mastered yet. 

These chores were done every day, whether Luke thought they needed it or not. Then there were tasks like mucking out the latrine—set a good distance from the hut, though Luke wondered sometimes if he would even notice the smell with all the fetid decay in the surroundings—which thankfully did not need to be done every day.

Luke had lived in some pretty primitive conditions in his life, and was no stranger to hardship. Tatooine wasn’t exactly a galactic tourist destination and he’d grown up poor, used to scrimping and saving and making do out of whatever haphazard array of junk he and his uncle could buy or scavenge. Likewise, life in the Rebel Alliance hadn’t exactly been luxurious, and he'd had to draw on childhood lessons more than once. 

But he’d always lived with some sort of technology—never this simply, this primitively: no 'refreshers, no vaporators, no automated kitchens, nothing. He'd never been solely responsible for his food, comfort and general well-being without technological assistance before. Yoda still had Luke’s lamp, but he didn’t even really use it much, or have any holos or anything even vaguely electrical about the cabin. It made for a strangely quiet – and strangely restful—abode without the omnipresent hum of machinery in the background. 

Luke was no stranger to silence. The desert of Tatooine had been filled with quiet and he'd spent more than his fair share of free time flying solo in his T-16, with only the roar of the engines in his ears. But he’d never lived so quietly before. Was this a requirement for a Jedi or was it just Yoda’s particular eccentricity? He thought of Obi-wan’s sparsely furnished dwelling on Tatooine and wondered. 

Was he going to end up like his teachers in forty years — old, grizzled, wearing peculiar robes, isolated and grumpy about disturbances? He hoped not. _Just because the only Jedi I know are isolated hermits does not mean it’s a requirement._ But he had to admit that recent precedence was not favourable in that regard.

After Yoda was satisfied with the chores, then the real training— as Luke thought of it then — began in earnest. 

It was an intensely physical practice—one that demanded total commitment and total control, not only from his body, but his mind. Yoda taught him a series of exercises to warm up his muscles, demanding static poses that shifted seamlessly with little warning into other poses, culminating in handstands that made his shoulders and wobble until he mastered the knack of spreading his weight evenly through his whole body. Luke learned how to fall without hurting himself, how to roll and dodge, how to flip himself forward and back, how to walk, how to run, how to sit, how to stand for minimum effort and maximum effect. They worked for hours without ceasing, Luke dripping with sweat from the effort and humidity as Yoda barked commands and corrections, until he was satisfied with his student’s performance at last, and then it was on to the next thing. 

Luke climbed trees and vines, flipping over and under obstacles, and raced through the swamp, avoiding traps and pitfalls that threatened to send him sprawling face-first into the muck. He dodged phosphorescent wisps that occasionally flared up out of nowhere — and probably, like everything on this godforsaken planet, weren’t particularly friendly — and stalked the local wildlife by following their tracks on the ground and traces of their passage in the air. All the while, Yoda perched on his back, whispering his next instruction in his ear, goading him on when he hesitated and muttering to himself when Luke failed to measure up to his expectations. 

None of this would have been possible for Luke without the Force. He realized later that that was precisely the point - to push him beyond his natural capacities so he would have no choice but to use the Force if he wanted to succeed. He'd thought Yoda had been crazy at the time, but there was method to the apparent madness the entire time. 

Open to the Force, even the crudest gesture was transformed into a thing of beauty. He didn’t have to think and plan because there was no room, no time for planning. When the Force was moving through him, his hands and his feet were guided to fall in precisely the right spot, at precisely the right time. When he slipped up, it was because he slipped away from the Force and lost the flow, usually with disastrous results for whatever feat Yoda was asking of him. 

Luke had been able to let the Force guide him before, but usually only for a few moments at a time, with a single object in mind — like taking a shot at the Death Star without his targeting computer or pulling his lightsaber out of a snowbank and into his waiting hand. Now Yoda was forcing him to a level of unity and oneness he had never thought possible — to stay in that state, and to keep doing impossible things, often with very little notice of what the next one would be. 

This would go on for what felt like hours until Yoda was satisfied or Luke was too exhausted to continue. Especially at the beginning, Luke usually caved first. They would return to the little hut, and Luke would eat a cold, miserable lunch of leftovers from breakfast or some of his shipboard rations, and then he would lie down and rest for as long as he could until Yoda called for him to start the whole damn routine all over again. 

Only when it began to get dark at last did they return to the hut again for dinner, which Luke cooked according to Yoda's instructions on the open fire. After the evening’s dishes were washed and put away, they would meditate again, and then Luke would fall into an exhausted sleep in his place by the hearth before the whole ordeal would repeat all over again in the morning. 

At first, it was a terrible mess. He had never failed so much in his life. The grey, sunless days of endless rain dragged on and on; his teacher was a demanding taskmaster, a monster whose ire and scorn belied his small stature. The hours blurred together in their sameness, each detail an excruciating agony. There were no distractions from his body, his mind, his failures, _himself_. It was exhausting just trying to keep track of everything, _and_ stay open to the Force at the same time. 

His sense of time evaporated. There was no longer any future, any past. He wasn’t Luke Skywalker, farm boy from Tatooine, hero of the Rebel Alliance—he was just Luke, Yoda’s clumsy student, and he had been here forever and ever and ever, and nothing would ever change that. Nothing changed. Not the routine, not the training, not Yoda’s insistent instructions, not his exhaustion, not his misery— not even the weather— changed. It was all an endless nightmare, an endless hell, but he had committed to it and he was stubborn enough to keep going even when he’d lost all hope of freedom or relief ever again.

Gradually, though, he got better. It felt like forever, but it was only a few days before his body— and more importantly, his mind— began to adjust to the routine. He became more confident, less sore. He hated himself less at the end of the day. 

It wasn’t until Luke had left Dagobah far, far behind that he realized the entire routine, all of it, from start to finish, was actually the training. _Everything_ was training for a Jedi. He’d just been too blind to recognize it for what it was at the time, because it hadn't matched his ideas of what it ought to look like. Even after Yoda's death, Luke was still learning his master's lessons. 

***

In the evenings, Yoda would tell him stories of the Jedi order, of the history of the Old Republic, and legends and folk-tales and teaching stories of unspecified provenance. Luke had studied history growing up — at least, he’d seen the holos, which were rigorously edited by the Imperial censors — and thought he knew something about the past. But he’d never spent time with anyone so old, let alone someone who had experienced so many of these events first hand. 

Yoda spoke of the Jedi’s origins in the distant past, of the rise of the Sith Lords who had abused their arts and given in to anger and hatred in their quest for effortless perfection. How the Jedi took children who’d shown promise at an early age to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant —the old name for Imperial Center — and trained them, first in groups of younglings, then one-on-one with a mentor. Luke learned of peacemaking expeditions that succeeded, and those that had failed, and the wars that had been subsequently fought and ended by the Jedi Order on the Republic's behalf. 

Of course, Luke was more interested in relatively recent events, about which Yoda was frustratingly vague and taciturn. “Tell me about my father,” Luke said one evening. “You said he was a powerful Jedi.” 

Yoda did not want to talk about Anakin Skywalker. Nor did he want to talk about the Clone Wars. He made occasional comments about Obi-wan, enough for Luke to suspect that the master and his former student had not always seen eye-to-eye. He did not want to talk about the mysterious Emperor who had risen to power two decades ago, and conquered most of the galaxy under his rule. He did not want to talk about Darth Vader, who had betrayed the Jedi to the Emperor, and who had led the wholesale slaughter that followed. He did not want to talk about why Obi-wan’s body had vanished under Vader’s blood-red lightsaber in their duel on the Death Star, or why Ben’s ghostly voice occasionally intervened in Luke’s life to keep him on the path of the Jedi. 

In short, Yoda did not want to talk about anything Luke was particularly interested in, anything that might actually be useful to him. Luke asked anyway because he was stubborn, and it was a subtle way of annoying Yoda while still pretending to be a diligent student. It was passive-aggressive and childish, but conversation with Yoda tended to bring out the worst in Luke somehow. And he did really want to know the answers. 

Yoda’s silence and obfuscations were frustrating, but Luke listened anyway to all his stories, no matter how irrelevant they seemed on the surface, because Yoda would often ask him questions about them a few days later and it was embarrassing to admit that he couldn’t remember the answers. And some days it was easier to listen to Yoda’s voice, idiosyncratic speech patterns and all, then it was to listen to silence. 

Luke asked him about how Obi-wan had manipulated the minds of the stormtroopers who had accosted them in Mos Eisley. "He said that the Force could influence the 'weak-minded'. What did that mean?" 

Yoda sighed. "When the Force is flowing through you, recognize it others will, even if they do not understand why. They honor and respect suggestions you give, even if it is contrary to their nature. Only if they are aware enough of who they truly are - strong-willed and stubborn - will they fight." 

"So if people know who they really are - or believe they know who they are - they won't respond to it?" 

"Correct!" Yoda waved his stick in the air to emphasize the point. "This is why the Jedi must be calm, at peace. Free of anger and hatred. Only then can they be sure that their suggestions are truly good, and not for their own personal benefit. Abusing your skills in this way is a mark of the Dark Side." 

"So was it wrong for Ben to manipulate those stormtroopers? They would have probably killed us and taken the droids if he hadn't done that. I couldn't believe they just let us go..." Luke's voice trailed off, the wonder of that memory evident in his voice. 

"Not wrong of Obi-wan to use the Force to save others from harm," Yoda said. "But wrong to manipulate the will of others without greatest need. If you are truly in the right, you will rarely need to use it. Better to let others come to their own conclusions, choose their own actions, even if you disagree with them." He tapped his stick against the ground and settled down into a cross-legged position on the ground, a clear indication that the conversation was now over. "Time for meditation it is, hmmph, yes."

Luke sighed, and did as he was bid, though his thoughts were focused more on Yoda's words than on his own breathing. It was only a few days later during a particularly vivid demonstration, that he really understood what his master had meant. 

Luke stood in the swampy clearing outside the hut, several meters away from where Yoda perched on a convenient log. "Try to reach me you will," Yoda said to Luke. "No matter what happens." 

Luke nodded and started to come forward. His first two steps were easy enough, but then the air began to feel thick and heavy, as if he were on a planet with twice the normal gravity, and lifting his foot was suddenly a collossal effort. Yoda didn't say anything, didn't gesture at all, just stood there, radiating peace, quiet, calm--and a very strong intention that it was not physically possible for Luke to reach him. 

Now that Luke could feel what was happening to him, the illusion that Yoda was projecting to his senses, he could fight it. But even knowing that it was only a suggestion, even though he could fight it by opening himself to the Force, it was still like moving through treacle. He made it only a few steps further before he collapsed, gasping from the effort of defying his master's will. 

Yoda looked down at him from his perch, his expression unreadable. "When you know who are you, struggle you will not," was all he said. 

"How do I not know who I am?" Luke asked, getting to his feet, still woozy from the exertion but not wanting to show it. "I'm twenty-three years old, I'm not a child, I--" 

Yoda did not smile. "Keep training."


	3. Chapter 3

He sat in the darkness before dawn, as he did every morning, staring at nothing in particular. He was supposed to be observing his breath, but his attention wandered like a drunken bantha, veering haphazardly from his aching legs to his growling stomach to vehement dislike for Master Yoda.... and on and on, an endless litany of complaints and critiques. It was exhausting. How had he never noticed it before? And was there anything he could do to make it stop? 

His skin prickled. Something was crawling on his left leg, underneath his pants. Roughly half the time, there was nothing there, but the other half more than made up for it in pain and excitement. The insect life of Dagobah was as multitudinous and diverse as Yavin's, but more camouflaged and unpleasant. So far, Luke had found various species of ants, spiders and ticks on him at various intervals, all of which had been singularly painful. The ant bites tended to swell, the spider bites lingered, and the fat, blood-soaked ticks were almost impossible to remove once they'd attached. 

Trouble was, it was hard to know whether it was an emergency or a false alarm without looking, and Master Yoda was going to notice if he looked. So Luke filed a mental note to investigate during breakfast and hoped he wouldn't get bitten before then. _If that counts as patience, then I suppose the training is working *beautifully*._ he thought, unable to restrain his sarcasm. 

Crawling insects weren't the only distractions Luke faced during his morning sessions. Sometimes, he drifted off and fell asleep still sitting upright - and woke, a minute or a second later, all senses alert and jangled, straight back into this waking nightmare. Sometimes he saw shapes and figures in the curves and folds of the wall - sometimes tiny spots and swirls blurred his vision until he blinked rapidly to clear them. 

Once he had visions of a tiny plasma skink from back home on Tatooine curled up in front of him, and even though he knew it wasn't really there, he still had to fight the impulse to reach out and stroke it. Another time, he saw ghostly spirits meditating next to him - nobody he recognized, although they were cloaked and hooded and they might not have even been human, so distorted was their outlines. Yoda seemed to ignore them, so Luke figured that they were _probably_ illusions. Probably. If they were really ghosts, than Obi-wan ought to be among them, and Luke was sure he would have noticed the old man if he were there in the first place. 

Once, he hallucinated -or maybe it was real, you could never tell with the Force - that his mind had vaulted free of his body and stepped through the packed earthen walls of Yoda's hut into the jungle beyond. For a moment, he'd exulted in his newfound freedom - but ended up retreating back to the familiar shelter of his body because there wasn't anything he wanted to _do_ on this forsaken planet without it. 

More often, though, he found himself drifting back into the past. It was not uncommon for memories to abruptly flair up and explode like proton torpedos across his consciousness, drowning him in old pains and feelings long forgotten. Arguments with Uncle Owen, scuffles with some of the bigger kids at Tosche Station, anguished screams as his fellow pilots' crafts exploded under Imperial fire, Dak's steaming corpse slumped over the controls of the snowspeeder guns during the retreat from Hoth - all of it blurred and swirled together his head, his heart racing as he re-lived it all over again. 

He thought about Han and Leia a lot, too. He'd made a number of friends with his fellow pilots, but he remained closer to those two than anybody else in the Rebellion. Somehow orchestrating and surviving a prison break from a battle station the size of a small moon had a way of bringing people together. He liked Chewbaccha, too - it was hard not to - but Luke's Shyriwook wasn't great, so it was difficult to follow Chewie's train of thought the way Han could. He realized that he took Chewbaccha for granted much of the time, and resolved to do better when he saw him again. 

Han was - well, in some ways, Han was everything that Luke wanted to be, or dreamed of being. He had his own ship, he was an excellent shot, with a dry, sarcastic wit and a low tolerance for bureaucratic bullshit. Han could be cynical and selfish, and he certainly didn't believe in the Force, but life was never boring around him. He played the cool and amoral smuggler well, but he'd never been able to stick with it - deep down inside, he was really a softie at heart. 

Luke suspected that it was Han's friendship with him and Leia that kept him hanging around with the Rebellion for so long. From a purely self-centered viewpoint, that had paid off: Han had saved his life twice over now - first during the Battle of Yavin and most recently in that blizzard back on Hoth. 

Now, though.... who knew what Han was up to? Luke had seen the saucer-shaped disc of the _Millenium Falcon_ rocketing away from Hoth before his own departure for Dagobah. With any luck Han was getting back in Jabba the Hutt's good graces and getting that death mark off his head. Those bounty hunters on Ord Mantell had been nastily persistent. But perhaps when that whole mess was resolved, Han would be back... He hoped so, for Leia's sake, if nothing else. Luke would miss Han a lot, too, but definitely not as much as Leia would, even if she wouldn't admit it...

Leia... well, she looked like an angel in that holo snippet Artoo had shown him back in his uncle's mechanic shed on Tatooine, all ethereal and white, and desperate for help. The real Leia matched the holo for looks, all right, but he'd been unprepared for the sharp tongue, angry persistence, and sheer competence that came along with it. She was beautiful and cultured - a planetary representative in the Imperial Senate since she was sixteen - with a regal bearing she'd never lost even though her homeland itself was gone. She'd been tortured, but never broken; she'd been forced to watch as the Death Star destroyed her entire planet, but she'd never given up fighting.

Yet somehow Leia had a way of always making Luke feel welcome, never the dull, clumsy, stupid farmboy he feared he was. It wasn't just her talent for politics at work - she really seemed to appreciate him. Luke fantasized about her from the moment he'd seen her holo, yet he'd never dared presume their friendship went further than it did. 

For a while he dared to hope it would become something more. But after the thrill of victory at the Battle of Yavin, it was clear that she was never going to feel that way about him. It was Han, of all people, who seemed to have the best chance at a more intimate relationship in spite of - or perhaps because of - the persistent sparks that flew whenever they were in the same room together. 

Now Luke wished that they would just hurry up and get on with it, make it official. The problem was that Han still wasn't committed to the Rebellion enough for Leia, and Leia wasn't going to declare any feelings for Han without that, given her devotion to the cause. Stalemate, unless Han got his act together with Jabba - which hopefully he would be doing soon if he hadn't already gotten around to it. 

Despite that extremely enjoyable kiss she'd given Luke back in the recovery room on Hoth, he didn't think he and the princess had a future together even if Han never returned. Maybe, in his dreams, but... well, Luke didn't think she trusted very many people and he was proud that she trusted him. He wasn't going to spoil it by presuming anything more, no matter how tempting it might be. Even if it would be nice if she looked at him the way she looked at Han when she thought nobody was watching.... 

"What do the Jedi do about marriage?" he'd asked Yoda once at dinner, having pondered that question for most of the morning meditation session that day after fantasizing about Leia in his arms yet again. 

It was a stupid question, and he wanted to take it back the moment the words had left his mouth. Of _course_ Jedi could get married - after all, his father had been a Jedi and a damn good one, too, how else did Luke think that he could have come into being, right? And yet nowhere in Yoda's stories from the deep past was there any mention of romance or courtship, let alone marriage.

Sometimes ordinary folk fell in love with a Jedi in those stories, but the Jedi always politely declined their advances, declaring themselves servants of the Force and of the galaxy as a whole. Force-sensitive children were raised in the Jedi Temple, yet there was never any hints about where they might have come from or why. Did the Force run in families? It must, or else how would Luke have inherited his gift from his father, as everyone seemed to assume? But if it ran in families, how could lineages be maintained if the Jedi remained celibate--

He expected Yoda to laugh, to snicker, to tease Luke for his naivete for the "facts of life" in the old Jedi's typical puerile style. Instead, the old master was grim and serious. His tone, when he finally broke the silence, was ominous. 

"Jedi do not marry. A Jedi must let all attachments go, lest those attachments be used against them. Fear for their loss is a path to the Dark Side."

Luke's jaw dropped. _No marriage? So how did my father--_ Then he got it. _Oh, he must have--_

Maybe that was the reason why Yoda was so hard on him: he was angry about Anakin Skywalker's defiance of the rules, and wanted to make sure that Luke wouldn't follow in his father's footsteps on this-- 

But he said none of this to Yoda. However muddled it might get on the personal level, the abstract generalities were confusing as well. "I don't understand. How can attachments lead to the Dark Side?" 

Yoda's eyes were big and wide, as if to impress his student with how serious this matter was. "Anger, hatred, fear, greed - the Dark Side of the Force are they! Therefore, a Jedi must let all that would inspire such feelings go." 

"Doesn't much good come from love? From friendship?" Luke demanded, his face flushed. _If those aren't allowed, I don't think I want to be a Jedi-- at least not on those terms-- I've been able to use the Force just fine as I am without falling to the Dark Side--_

If Yoda noticed Luke's sudden agitation, he didn't let it bother him. "Love, friendship - much good comes from them, hmm, yes. But if you cannot let them go when they are in danger - if you try to hold on when it is time to let go - then they become a great weight, pulling you down towards the Dark Side. Stay calm, you can, when something you love is threatened? At peace are you, when friends are in danger?" 

"No," Luke said. Just to admit it was a defeat - and yet he wasn't sure he really believed it was a defeat. _What is the point of these powers if I can't use them to help others?_

Yoda bowed his head. "You must let go of everything you fear to lose if you are to become a true master of the Force." 

Luke wasn't sure he believed this, but he nodded slowly and the moment passed. 

Even now, he still wasn't sure what to think about that conversation, with all its implications for both his past and his future. Had Anakin Skywalker defied the Jedi precepts in fathering him? Was that really so bad? He wouldn't _exist_ if Anakin hadn't done that, after all. Did Yoda really bear a grudge against him for it? That didn't sound like a particularly noble, Jedi thing to do, but it would explain so much-- 

And was Luke really going to have to give up any possibility of friendship in order to master this practice? 

_There must be another way. Yoda is wrong, I know it. Somehow, there must be another way-- Maybe Yoda's method works okay if you're not human, because I don't think human beings can live like that, no matter how much you meditate--_

He was jolted from his reverie by Yoda tapping his stick, signaling the end of the morning meditation at last. Damn. How long had he been daydreaming? Had Yoda noticed his distraction? If he did, he didn't say anything, for which Luke was very grateful. 

He took advantage of his newfound freedom to examine his left leg. It turned out to be one of the larger and more colorful species of tick, only partially attached and relatively easy to pry loose with the end of a fork. He fed the bloated little monster to the snake he found curled up around his breakfast mug after he'd extricated it from the reptile's coils. As far as Luke was concerned, that was the one good thing about snakes everywhere in the hut: he'd never seen a more efficient disposal system for parasites. 

Yoda kept Luke so busy that day, he barely had time to think of anything else other than the immediate task at hand. He wasn't sure if that was deliberate or not, but it was easier to obey his teacher's instructions and keep his doubts and rebellious thoughts to himself. At least for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yoda's conversation with Luke about letting go of attachments is a callback to a similar talk with Anakin in the prequels.


	4. Chapter 4

Though it seemed like madness, there was method to Yoda's instructions. Luke was vaguely aware that his teacher possessed some sort of strategy, but it wasn't until the day he went into the cave that he realized how cleverly he'd been set up. 

The day started off routinely enough: meditation, breakfast, chores. Then Yoda, clinging to Luke's back as per usual, had lead him on a convoluted route through the swamp at a hectic pace, one that sent Luke clambering over roots, swinging from vines, and racing over the lumpy terrain, with the occasional backflip to break up the flow. Even though he was gasping and sweating within moments, he couldn't help but feel a tiny flicker of pride at how smooth and graceful his motions had become, and how much looser and stronger his body had become under Yoda's regime. He barely even wrinkled his nose at the stench of decomposing vegetation and marsh gases anymore, too. 

Meanwhile, Artoo trailed along behind as best he could. After ascertaining there was really no conceivable way to lift the X-wing with the available resources, the little droid had taken to following Luke and Yoda on their daily rounds. Luke didn't blame Artoo one bit for not wanting to be alone on Dagobah, and appreciated the company, even though Artoo was sometimes more of a distraction than a help in this setting. 

Artoo wobbled along the paths that Luke had cut through the muck, doing his best to avoid falling in the fetid pools that frequently lurked on either side. Many of them were shallow little puddles - disgusting if you splashed through them but not actually dangerous. Others, however, were quite deep and it was impossible for Luke to tell which was which just by looking. Artoo did okay with his sensors, but it was hard for him to move as fast as Luke did. 

Luke spared a glance behind him to make sure Artoo was still with them. To his relief, the little droid emerge out of the mist behind him. Even as Yoda spurred him on, Luke couldn't help but feel a pang of remorse at how much he'd neglected Artoo since coming to Dagobah. Yoda's training hadn't left him much time or energy to spare for Artoo. 

To make matters worse, Yoda seemed to despise the little droid - or maybe he just didn't approve of technology? Luke wasn't entirely sure. Later, he learned of one reason for this disconnect: in the last days of the Old Republic, the Jedi had a deep prejudice against droids, even though the Force was an energy field created by all beings, all matter, and the droids partook of it just as much any any rock or planet did. And yet droids didn't detect it or respond to it as living beings could. No droid had ever been a Jedi. And the use of battle droids in the Clone Wars had apparently not endeared their more peaceful brethren to Yoda any further.

Artoo himself made no secret of his disapproval of Yoda, and was more than capable of holding a grudge. Luke didn't think it would escalate to all-out war - he was pretty sure Yoda would win, which is why he did his best to ignore Artoo's tirades - but it was refreshing to hear Artoo vocalize some of the thoughts Luke was too diplomatic to express. Artoo had a surprisingly vulgar vocabulary for a droid; no wonder Threepio was always fussing at him. 

Admittedly, Luke had a soft spot for droids that most of his colleagues didn't share. Even among the freedom fighters of the Rebellion, Luke's treatment of droids like people raised more than a few eyebrows. But droids been his constant companions since childhood - he worked alongside them on the farm, repaired them when they were broken, and even played with them when his aunt and uncle hadn't time for him. He'd had human friends, yes, but even if Owen wouldn't let him go out, the droids would still be there for him. Luke had learned the bells and whistles of astromech dialect from a primitive R1 unit that was older than Owen was. In some ways, it functioned as a native language for him, although he hadn't the equipment to speak it properly.

Privately, he vowed to make it up to Artoo somehow, once he finished his training and they left this miserable planet for good. No one could ask for a more loyal companion, let alone one as clear and logical, with a surprising sense of humor to boot (particularly when it came to teasing Threepio or Han). Luke would be dead several times over without Artoo, and he was grateful that Artoo was also exceedingly patient with him. 

Today, Yoda's lecture was a rambling commentary about feeling the Force. Luke had heard it all before, though he still struggled to put it fully into practice. But as he felt himself slow down, Yoda switched to a different subject, one he'd hinted at before, but never elaborated on: the dark side of the Force. And then there was the opening Luke had been waiting for for some time now: "Consume you it will, as it did Obi-wan's apprentice!"

"Vader," Luke panted, coming to an abrupt halt. He turned to look at Yoda, who was still clinging to Luke's back. _Darth Vader._

He'd only seen Vader once face-to-face - locked in combat with Obi-wan Kenobi on the Death Star, as Luke and his companions rushed towards the _Millennium Falcon_ and freedom. Luke had never forgotten what happened next - Ben had held up his glowing blue lightsaber, as Vader's red blade had flashed down and murdered him. Just as he had murdered Luke's father, Anakin Skywalker. 

Privately, Luke hoped that Anakin had put up more of a fight than Ben did, though he knew that Ben had deliberately sacrificed himself to buy his companions time to escape. By doing so, he'd saved Luke and the others and ensured that the stolen Death Star plans made it to the Rebellion at last, thereby restoring freedom to the galaxy. Even as he grieved, Luke knew that he would have made the same choice in a heartbeat. No doubt Anakin had fought valiantly, sacrificing his own life for his comrades, too. 

Still, there was something terribly ironic in that Obi-wan had been murdered by his own apprentice. It just didn't seem right. Though after training with Yoda, Luke had to admit he could understand how an apprentice's ire could take a potentially murderous turn. The difference was that Yoda was usually - obnoxiously - _right_ most of the time, even when Luke wished he wasn't. 

As if murdering two of the most important people in Luke's life wasn't enough, Vader had also personally tortured Leia. Luke didn't think he could ever forgive Vader for that. Leia was amazingly strong, there was no doubt about it, but he knew she still had nightmares about her experiences there. _Luke_ had nightmares about it sometimes, and he'd only heard secondhand accounts - both the crisp, polished report she'd submitted to the Alliance commanders, and the more personal version she'd shared with him in the aftermath of the Battle of Yavin.

Vader wasn't well known to ordinary civilians. Luke had never heard of him before that last day on Tatooine, in Ben's hut, along with the revelation of the lightsaber and Anakin Skywalker's true identity as a Jedi Knight. He rarely appeared in official Imperial propaganda, although rumors about him were everywhere once you got out of the backwater planets of the Outer Rim. 

But every member of the Rebel Alliance knew about Darth Vader and hated him passionately. He was the commander of the elite stormtrooper unit, the 501st, and the fearsome Death Squadron, representing some of the Empire's most powerful forces, and the epitome of all the evils of the Imperial regime. They called him the Emperor's hound, for his skill in ferreting out hidden cells, and the Emperor's hangman, for his utter ruthlessness with underlings and foes alike. 

Others called him the Grim Reaper or Death himself, because if he saw you, you were dead, or would be very soon.The tiny poison pills that Alliance operatives carried on their person at all times were much quicker and cleaner than any death he could give you. Not everyone was lucky enough to take theirs in time. 

Luke, Leia and Han belonged to small, select group of rebels who had seen him and survived the encounter. That, more than his victory in the Battle of Yavin, had impressed Alliance high command enough to promote Luke to officer immediately after his enlistment.He hoped he could repeat the feat when he had Vader's full, undivided attention and the Dark Lord wasn't using him and his companions as bait to snare the entirety of the Alliance. 

The dark, looming presence, with its unchanging death mask and ominous, rattling breath, haunted Luke. He knew deep in his bones that someday he would have to face Vader if the Rebellion was ultimately to succeed. No matter how many converts they won to their cause, no matter how many ships they could field in battle, no matter how clever their strategies and tactics - it would all be for nothing if Vader still lived. 

And, Luke had to admit, he _wanted_ revenge. For his father. For Ben. For Leia. For Owen and Beru, murdered by Imperial stormtroopers on Vader's orders. For all the beings Vader had slaughtered, civilians and rebels alike. No one that heinous could be permitted to roam free. It would be more than fair - it would be just. It was the only path to freeing the galaxy from despotism. 

Assuming he could do it, of course. Vader was not an opponent to be taken lightly, especially armed with the power of the dark side of the force. 

"Is the dark side stronger?" Luke asked Yoda, hoping for an opportunity to catch his breath while his teacher pontificated. 

"No, no. Just - easier. Quicker. More seductive."

"But how am I to know the good side from the bad?" This was a perennial question in Luke's mind - could he end up on the dark side without being aware of it? Did one have to be conscious of the dark side in order to draw on it? Yoda was so vague and confusing on this point. 

"You will know," Yoda said firmly, "when you are calm. At peace. Passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense. Never for attack." 

_How does that work? Sometimes you have to attack in order to defend?_ "But tell me why I can't--" 

But Yoda cut him off. "No, no! There is no 'why'." He sighed, clearly disappointed by Luke's density. "Nothing more will I teach you today. Clear your mind of questions." 

Luke stood there, breathing hard, trying to calm himself. Only when he'd accepted the situation did he gently set his teacher down. It was a challenge to be kind to Yoda when he was angry, but he didn't think that losing his temper would help his cause. 

He hated it when Yoda refused to answer his questions. 

He hated that Yoda refused to explain why it was bad for him to have questions. 

How could he clear his mind when his teacher wouldn't tell him anything?

His teacher, who had just happened to bring him to this spot, of all places... just another patch of jungle, indistinguishable from all the others in this miserable swamp - right? 

He'd left his jacket hanging on a tree nearby. He went to retrieve it. It was cold and clammy, and, as he draped it around his shoulders, so was he. There was a chill in the air here - an icy blast that would have been more appropriate for Hoth than thishot, fetid jungle. 

He shivered. What was happening? "There's something not right here," he said aloud. "I feel... _cold_..."

His sense of direction was useless in this grey landscape, but he was pretty sure they'd come here on other days. Had this always been here and he just couldn't sense it? 

Yoda picked up his stick and pointed off to one side. "That place - is strong in the dark side of the Force," said Yoda calmly. "A domain of evil it is. In you must go." 

Luke blinked. Oh. This was a test. This had to be a test. Like most of Yoda's tests, it sounded unpleasant. "What's in there?" 

True to form, Yoda was cryptic and unhelpful. "Only what you take with you." 

(He didn't realize until later that Yoda, as usual, had told him the exact, literal truth, but in an entirely unhelpful way. But then again, would the lesson have been as effective if Luke had known from the start what he was getting himself into?) 

Luke strode forward, tying his utility belt with his blaster and lightsaber around his waist as he did so, only to stop in his tracks at Yoda's next statement. 

"Your weapons. You will not need them." 

Luke stopped, and looked back at his teacher for a moment. Then he went back to tying the belt around his waist. He didn't like to go anywhere on Dagobah without a weapon. He tolerated being unarmed when he was with Yoda, because Yoda insisted on it, and he didn't think anything would attack him in Yoda's presence. 

But Luke was damned if he would walk into a cave on this miserable planet, alone and unarmed. Especially a place Yoda admitted was a "lair of evil," strong with the dark side. What if something attacked him? 

The only reason he'd survived the attack on Hoth was because he'd taken his lightsaber with him. Why was Yoda so confident he wouldn't need it here, too? 

In hindsight, he should have known it was a trap, another test of character, just like his first meeting with Yoda. He should have listened, paused, obeyed the suggestion as if it were an order. But he was annoyed and frustrated and impatient with his questions being shut down, and it gave him a great pleasure to ignore his master and keep the lightsaber and blaster with him. He kept going.

(It was probably overkill to have two weapons, but you never knew which one was going to be more useful in a pinch. He'd practiced more with the blaster and was a pretty good shot, but there were things you could do with a lightsaber that you couldn't do with a blaster, like gut a Tauntaun or cut your feet free from the ice before a giant furry monster ripped you apart. Who knew what a place like Dagobah could throw at you?)

To his surprise, there were no snarky, passive-aggressive comments from Yoda. Luke was suddenly ashamed by his immaturity, and yet he couldn't bring himself to take the belt off now that his pride was on the line. So he kept going forward towards the source of the coldness, squelching through the muck and dodging yet another mottled constrictor wrapped around a tree. 

He heard something scream, and paused. It had sounded close, but then he realized it was one of the giant batwing creatures soaring overhead, and kept going. 

Artoo told him later that something strange happened as Luke stepped out of sight. He'd... vanished from the droid's sensors. Completely, as if he'd been winked out of existence. It was, Artoo reported, a very disturbing experience. 

Artoo didn't understand the Force, didn't sense it or perceive it. Luke wasn't surprised that the droid had been unable to detect him in the cave. Strange things happened there, and the normal laws of the universe seemed not to apply. 

***

He followed the source of the coldness to a dark hole in the ground, just big enough for him to crawl through. It didn't look promising, but nobody had ever said Luke Skywalker was a coward. They called him a fool, and they were right - this was exactly the kind of stupid, risky stunt he would have pulled with Biggs back on Tatooine. He could just see the expression on the faces of everyone he knew in the Rebellion when they learned that Luke Skywalker had died on an obscure backwater planet in some damn fool caving stunt. That was, of course, assuming news of his demise made it off-planet in the first place... 

A spiny grey lizard crawled out of the hole. Luke gave it a wide berth and wished it all the best. He hoped there weren't more of them inside. Lizards weren't as bad as snakes but he wasn't too fond of them either. 

He lowered himself gingerly down into the hole, which had been dug around the spreading root system of a nearby tree. The Roots dangled everywhere, wet and slimy to touch and his skin crawled. Or maybe that was just the Dark Side, which was also everywhere around him, so cold it was hard to breathe now. 

Things could have been worse. At least the roots made a good support system and it wasn't so cramped he had to crawl. 

He reached out towards a root to steady himself, only to realize a second before his hand made contact that there was a snake already occupying that space. He made sure to keep his hands firmly at his sides after that. Fucking snakes. Of course they would be down here, too. 

Something was moaning and groaning above him, as if in pain. Luke wished that whatever it was would put itself out of its misery and expire, preferably without involving him in the process. He just wanted to see whatever Yoda wanted him to see as quickly as possible and get out again without a fight with the local wildlife. 

Light spilled down from the surface through holes in the earth above his head. This was good, because Yoda still hadn't returned the headlamp he'd stolen. Luke kept going, all of his senses alert, reaching out with the Force as best he could, though the pervasive chill of the Dark Side threatened to completely smother him. 

He kept walking. What was he looking for? What was he supposed to do here?

There were more lizards down here - a whole nest of them, in fact. They croaked ominously as he passed. Several flicked their forked tongues in and out, but thankfully, they let him pass unmolested. 

He reached the end of the tree roots, at the entrance of what looked like a passage made of stone. The remains of some ancient civilization, perhaps? But if so, why had they--

And then he heard footsteps, big and heavy and ominous, approaching. He took an involuntary step backwards, and then another, as the sound came closer and closer. Then there was a familiar, ominous rattle of breath, a sound that had dominated his nightmares since that day on the Death Star when Obi-wan had died. 

Darth Vader stepped out of the shadows. 

He knew it was an illusion - it had to be an illusion, there was no way Vader could really be _here_ of all places, looking for _him_ , it was a test, it was all part of Yoda's stupid test - and yet there was no time for thought. Panic and adrenaline overwhelmed any rational thoughts Luke might have posessed. His lightsaber was in his hand and ignited before his conscious mind had caught up with him. He brought the blade up to his face in the defensive stance Ben had taught him - hours before Darth Vader had murdered him. 

Vader drew his own weapon, and brought the blood-red blade up to mirror Luke. There was a pause that seemed to last for a thousand years as they stared at each other, the only sound the buzzy, breathy hum of their lightsabers- 

-and then Vader moved, sending the blade swinging towards Luke's exposed flank, as Luke dropped his own weapon to successfully block the blow. Undeterred, Vader attacked the opposite side, and Luke parried again-- 

He should have stopped there. That was enough, but he wanted to fight, he wanted to win, he wanted the battle over and done. Luke lashed out with a violent swing of his own that penetrated the Sith Lord's defenses and hit him in the neck. Vader's head went flying, and there was a violent explosion as the lightsaber penetrated the armor and all the electronics in Vader's machinery short-circuited. 

His neck stump smoking, Vader fell to the ground, extinguishing his lightsaber in a final, jerking death reflex. The severed head, still wrapped in its protective helmet, rolled to the ground at Luke's feet. The saber had cauterized the wound instantly; unlike the wampa back on Hoth, there was no blood. 

Luke stared at Vader's helmet, completely paralyzed by what he had just done. He'd never killed anyone like this before. Sure, he'd shot at stormtroopers with blasters, and blown fighters out of the sky, but that was different somehow. That was war. This felt - frighteningly personal. _Intimate_ , somehow. He couldn't hear the jungle sounds over the buzz of his lightsaber or his own frantic heartbeat. 

He wasn't sure if this was real or not, but even if it was a dream, he didn't like it. _If this is what I have to do to win, I don't want to do this--_

And then it got worse. 

With one last electrical spasm of light, Vader's helmet exploded. Luke ducked to avoid the shrapnel, which fell in a burning hazy around him. When the smoke cleared, Luke could see the face underneath Vader's mask at last. 

But it wasn't Vader underneath. He was looking at _himself_

It took a few moments for his mind to catch up with everything that had happened. _This makes no sense-- How is this possible- I don't understand--_

_Oh, shit, I think I'm going to be sick--_

He didn't vomit, but he wanted to. Somehow, he managed to extinguish his own lightsaber and attach it to his belt. He didn't want to linger in this terrible place any longer, but his limbs didn't seem to work quite right any more. 

It was a long, slow climb back to the surface. 

***

Yoda didn't say anything when Luke finally emerged from the cave, shaking and trembling with exhaustion and emotion, a haunted look in his eye. Somehow, Luke knew that Yoda knew exactly what had happened. But there were no obnoxious recriminations, no intrusive questions, no comforting aphorisms. Just silence. 

There were no more lessons for the day. He let Yoda up on his back and they walked back to the hut, still in silence. Luke went straight to his pallet on the floor of Yoda's hut, lay down, and was asleep before his head touched the ground. Yoda didn't disturb him until the next morning, when it was time for meditation again. 

Later, Artoo said that he and Yoda had waited most of the day for Luke to return. The droid had almost given up hope when Luke had suddenly popped back into sensor range. From Luke's perspective, his entire journey had taken less than an hour. He hadn't thought to check his chronometer, though, so perhaps his estimate was off. Still... 

Time moved differently in the cave, for reasons he didn't understand. And somehow, in that shadowy, underground realm, the inner secrets of his soul had been given tangible form and he'd walked among them. He wasn't sure how it was possible, but it was the only explanation for the vision he'd received. 

He didn't understand the implications, though. Was he destined to fall like Darth Vader, through anger, hatred, impatience? Was Vader truly a part of him, or was there a Vader-like portion of his own soul? Should he have refused to fight Vader at all? Let himself be cut down like old Obi-wan? What would have happened if he'd followed Yoda's suggestion and gone in unarmed? Did he bring the darkness and violence with him, as Yoda had suggested?

But in some ways, it didn't matter. He knew that whatever happened in the cave had been a test. 

He knew he'd failed.


	5. Chapter 5

Luke threw himself into his training with renewed vigor and enthusiasm after his visit to the cave. It was just as well, because Yoda changed everything, just when Luke was finally used to the routine. 

It was now no longer difficult. It was practically impossible. 

He ran, he jumped, he leapt, he rolled, he dove. He lifted rocks with his mind, balanced on one hand, let Yoda perch on his feet - all at the same time. 

For every success, a million failures. For every grudging compliment from Yoda, a thousand shrugs, snorts, sighs or silence, all of which hurt Luke more than any outright correction (though there was plenty of that, too). 

He was haunted by the vision of Darth Vader the cave had shown him. He still didn't understand what it meant, but he knew it was true on some deep level, and it scared him. He'd given into his anger and fear. He'd been the aggressor, not the defender. He hadn't acted like a true Jedi.

He'd thought he knew what failure looked like. He had been wrong - very wrong, as it turned out. It wasn't as simple as stumbling on a training run, or letting the rock slip and slide out of his control from a distance when he got distracted. If he failed - truly failed - and fell to the dark side, he would become the very entity he feared most. The one he was destined to someday face, to fight. 

He wasn't ready. 

He didn't want to think about it, but he spent so much time in silence, without distraction, that he couldn't help but think about it. He certainly couldn't stop it infiltrating his dreams at night. He worried it and chased it like a dewback with a wounded womp rat, and no matter how many times his fear and doubt circled round in his head, he never came to a satisfactory resolution.

He didn't discuss any of this with Yoda. As much as he craved advice and support, he wasn't entirely sure his teacher would provide it. More likely, he'd prod Luke with his stick instead, and remonstrate Luke about the dangers of distraction. Or the Dark Side. Some days Luke wondered whether those were the same thing for Yoda. 

But he did try to engage Yoda about their mutual enemy - Darth Vader. 

"So Vader and the Emperor slaughtered the Jedi twenty years ago, and you and Ben went into hiding," Luke said to Yoda one evening during the dinner clean-up. "But I'm the one who has to face him?" 

Yoda had taken to attacking Luke with levitated pots, pans, rocks and snakes at random intervals, feverishly cackling "There is no rest from training!" whenever Luke complained. He hoped he could keep his teacher talking long enough to finish the dishes without another onslaught. 

"Hmmph, yes." Yoda didn't sound happy about that admission. "We two were not enough. Saw the truth too late, we did. We - hoped others would arise, strong in the Force. Able to challenge Vader and the Emperor as they grew old, complacent." 

"Are there others?" 

Yoda's face went blank. Luke had gradually realized this was a sign of deep, deep emotion. "None that have received the training." 

If anything, that just put even more pressure on Luke's shoulders. "If I fail, then..."

"If, if, if! Always thinking about the future!" Yoda turned away, and a pot lid zoomed towards Luke's face, only to be deflected at the last instance by a wooden spoon Luke threw up at the last moment. It fell to the ground with a clatter - as two others hit him in the back at the same moment. 

"Ow! That hurt!" 

"How do you think you can defeat Vader, with reflexes like that! When the Force is with you, surprise you I will not!" 

Luke rubbed the sore spot on his back, inwardly fuming. "How am I to fight him if aggression leads to the Dark Side?" 

"You will know when you are ready," said Yoda. Tapping his stick against the ground, he turned back to the fire and began humming loudly to himself, indicating that the conversation was over. 

But Luke wasn't going to let him stop there. "How will I know when I'm ready?" 

"You will be ready when you know who you truly are!" Luke had never seen Yoda so agitated before. Clearly, he'd hit a nerve there. 

"I _know_ who I am, I'm Luke Skywalker, and I'm--" _Tired of this bullshit_ , he wanted to say. But he never got a chance. 

Yoda's head swiveedl around and Luke was suddenly unable to finish his sentence. It wasn't an attack, it wasn't even aggressive, but Luke was filled with the unmistakeable sense of _presence_ radiating from his teacher's small frame, so the atmosphere inside the hut was thick and heavy, like on a planet with too much gravity for the human body to comfortably bear. It was the same tremendous weight that had stopped him before, when they'd had this conversation before. 

"You must trust me," Yoda said quietly, and the pressure relented. This time, Luke let him turn back to the fire without any more interruptions. 

At least he was able to finish the dishes in peace that night. But he dreamed of sonorous, rattling breathing in the darkness, and a masked figure with a humming, blood-red lightsaber. 

Leia, white-robed and brilliant, stood off to one side, her hair wrapped in tightly wound coils, which etiquette demanded for formal Senate proceedings. She looked like she had in Artoo's holo, and when he'd found her sleeping in that barren cell back on the Death Star. She looked first to Vader, then back at Luke, and he saw comprehension dawn on her face that Vader and Luke were actually the same. Her lips curled back in a ferocious snarl of contempt. "I trusted you, Luke. _I trusted you--_ " 

He woke, gasping and sweating, his heart and mind racing, when it was time for morning meditation again. It took most of the period before he was calm enough to open himself to the Force and keep going. 

At this rate, he wasn't sure he was ever going to be ready. 

_I wonder what my father would have done..._

Thinking of his father brought back that old, familiar pang of grief in his heart that had never gone away, even after all these years. He would never know what his father would do, because his father was gone. 

_I thought becoming a Jedi would bring me closer to my father somehow. But I still feel so far away from him. The only thing I have of him is his lightsaber...._

***

"So when are we going to start working with lightsabers?" Luke asked hopefully one morning after the chores and warm-ups were over. 

Yoda sniffed and tapped his stick against the ground. "So impatient are you. Matters so much to you, the lightsaber does?" 

"Well... yes?" Luke ventured, not entirely sure what response his teacher was seeking. "Ben said it was the weapon of a Jedi--" 

"You are not ready. Too impatient. Too angry. That is the wrong mindset. No toy this is," Yoda said. 

He was losing his composure. It was an occupational hazard of conversation with Yoda. "I know it's not a toy, I just--" -- _want to be good enough already_ , he thought, but did not let himself say. Not only did it prove Yoda's point, it sounded pretty damn pathetic, even to his own ears. 

"Just?" 

Luke sighed and flopped down on the ground besides his teacher. If Yoda was going to lecture him, he might as well be sitting down for it. 

"A Jedi isn't defined what he wears or the weapon he wields. A Jedi is one who can move with the Force." 

"So why do the Jedi use lightsabers then?" 

Yoda tsked sharply. "To wield a lightsaber with skill requires much concentration. Dedication. Training. Discipline. Patience. Awareness. The same skills that are required to master the Force. Go together, they do." 

The way Yoda described the old Jedi - more diplomats than warriors, really -reminded him of Leia. Pity she couldn't use the Force. _Yoda probably would have preferred someone like her over me!_

Though he couldn't imagine Leia meekly accepting Yoda's orders without a struggle. Yoda might not actually win that one. He had to fight hard to stifle a grin at that mental image. 

Fortunately, Yoda wasn't finished. "Blasters? Hmmph. Cannot be used to defend. Only to threaten, kill. A lightsaber offers protection, yes, and defense - and, if necessary, it can also attack." 

"But how am I supposed to defeat Vader if I don't practice with the lightsaber?" Luke demanded. "Do you expect me to go up against him without knowing how to defend myself?" 

Yoda turned and looked him straight in the eye. "Did your lightsaber serve you well in the cave?" 

His words hit Luke like a durasteel wall. The impact took all the fight and anger out of his body, leaving him limp and drained. No counterargument was possible against the weight of the truth. Sadness washed over him, coupled the sick, twisted despair that coiled in his stomach. _He's right. I'm not ready, I never will be ready, I will be stuck here forever. I hate this so much._

But he couldn't quit. His friends in the Rebellion were depending on him. They might not know he was their only hope against Vader, but Luke knew he couldn't run away from his destiny. He'd seen too much of Imperial cruelty to walk away now. 

Abandoning his training now would only prove Yoda's initial skepticism right. And _that_ would be galling. 

"No, Master Yoda," he said quietly, staring down at the soggy muck under his limbs. His eyes stung, and he quickly wiped the offending liquid away, pretending it was sweat and not tears. 

***

It was several days before Luke's spirits revived enough to talk again, and even then, he did so gingerly, as if the slightest mistake would send Yoda's insights piercing through him like a live wire. 

The worst part was that everything Yoda said was true. Luke could defend himself against lies with righteous confidence, but he had no real defense against the truth. It made the pain worse, and he was more careful now with his teacher now that his ego had been so thoroughly bruised. 

It didn't help that the X-wing was still firmly entrenched in several meters of Dagobah swamp muck. Luke had attempted several times to rig up a pulley system to haul the craft out of the turgid water, but had been stymied by the sheer weight and the mechanics involved. Even with Artoo's assistance, he hadn't been able to make it work. He could lift a few rocks with the Force, but he didn't think he could handle an X-wing by himself, and Yoda didn't seem interested when Luke broached the subject. 

_He knows I'm trapped here as long as that's buried,_ Luke thought, more spitefully than he intended. _No wonder he doesn't seem to care. He probably got his ship stuck here too when he came here, and that's why he doesn't go face Vader himself._

He knew he was being petulant and childish and _probably_ none of that was actually true. But there was something so satisfying about being able to blame someone else for his problems, for the whole miserable planet, even if it wasn't quite true. And it certainly would explain why there'd been no sign of Yoda's ship or of any technology here. 

Luke sighed. _I never thought I'd say this, but moisture farming back on Tatooine is starting to look really good by now. At least I knew there *was* a way out, even if I never thought I'd get there--_

But it was hard to use the Force and complain at the same time, so he threw himself into the present. With past and future both equally out of reach, the long, endless present - however miserable it might be - was all he had. 

***

Matters came to a head one afternoon while he was training outside with Yoda, near the crash site. Luke was practicing levitation with the Force while in a now-required one-armed handstand, while Yoda perched on his feet, tapping his stick in rhythm as he chanted encouragements. 

Artoo, who had never let Luke out of sensor range since that unsettling incident at the cave, watched the proceedings with interest. He seemed to find the apparent defiance of the usual laws of physics to be intriguing, rather than personally upsetting. Threepio would have been beside himself a the sight of rocks hovering in mid-air, but Artoo appeared to be taking it all in stride, given that there was no obvious mechanism detectable to his sensors. This was good, because Luke's concentration wasn't strong enough to do this with any distractions nearby. 

The rock lifted, dipped and wobbled - and then rose and landed solidly on top of another rock Luke had manipulated into position earlier. This was encouraging - it had taken him a long time to be able to do even that much in this position and he savoured his accomplishment. Perhaps he might even be able to lift another one on top of that today-- 

And there was a tremor and the ground wobbled. Luke swayed, but stayed upright. Then Artoo beeped and whistle frantically that the X-wing was sinking further into the swamp at last. Luke fell over in shock and sent himself, the rocks, and his instructor tumbling over in an ungainly heap. 

There was nothing to do, of course. By the time he was splashing into the muck, all but the very last tip of the X-wing's right wing had vanished under the opaque, grey water. Fortunately, the hatch was closed, so at least there would be no water in the cockpit and controls - but it would definitely be too heavy to lift by any mechanical means at their disposal. 

Artoo was panicking, a series of agitated notes that went on and on before trailing off into existential despair. Luke had rarely seen the little droid this upset before, even when damaged by enemy fire. 

It was hard to blame Artoo - he was panicked himself, and trying not to show it. Their only way out was now buried several meters underwater, where ominous dragon-lizards lurked. 

He hadn't thought his life could suck more than it already did. 

As usual, he'd been completely wrong. 

All of Luke's long-held frustrations suddenly burst into the open at this latest misfortune. "Oh, no. We'll never get it out now," he complained to Artoo, who moaned in sympathetic acknowledgement. 

"So certain are you?" asked Yoda calmly. Damn him. Didn't he understand what a catastrophe this was? Had he ever shown any sympathy for Luke's plight? Had he ever offered to help Luke extricate the ship?

Luke turned and glared at Yoda for a moment before turning back to survey the ruins of his ship. He was too angry to speak. 

Yoda sighed and stared down at his feet. "So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?"

Artoo was still babbling something about the probability of raising the ship from such a position - about two hundred forty-nine thousand sixty three to one, but he kept redoing the calculations because the figure was too awful to contemplate. 

"Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different!" Luke said, gesturing to towards the ship. 

"No." Yoda banged his stick against the ground for emphasis. " _No_ different. Only difference is in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned." 

Luke thought it over. Like most of Yoda's sayings, it sounded batshit crazy, but- he was out of other options. "All right, I'll give it a try," he admitted grudgingly. 

"NO!" Yoda was so emphatic that Luke involuntarily turned back to him. "Try not." He settled his hands back on the head of his stick. "Do. Or do not. There is no try." 

_Okay, Master Yoda, whatever you say,_ Luke thought. He turned back to the ship and let out all of his frustration, all of his anger out with a loud sigh. He calmed himself, just as Yoda had taught him, let his mind go blank and empty, just as he did for the rocks. 

Only then did he reach out with his arm and with the Force. He didn't need to move his arm, but it helped him channel the power that moved through him, told it where to go. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. 

For a long, shining moment, he was everywhere in the galaxy at once, yet completely present here on Dagobah at the same time. His senses opened up and expanded rapidly, yet his mind was able to keep pace with flow, rather than being overwhelmed by the sudden influx. Even with his eyes closed, he could see the X-wing shimmering in the water, waiting to accept his touch. He reached out towards the X-wing, just as he had done with the rocks - he _lifted_ and _twisted_ , and the X-wing moved-- 

(Artoo squealed as if he'd been short-circuited and Yoda took in a deep breath of surprise that was oh, so satisfying to Luke's ears--)

\--only to fade as the X-wing slipped from his grasp as his mind caught up to what he was doing and just how big a weight he was actually lifting. He struggled to hold onto to that flowing effortlessness, where time and distance didn't matter and mass a quality no more intrinsic to its being than color and easily ignored - but it was too much, too soon, and he buckled under the pressure and let it go. His hand drooped. 

The right wing slipped back under the water, this time entirely. 

He was back in his body again, tired, sore and more despairing than he'd ever been in his entire life. Luke opened his eyes, breathing hard, and Artoo whistled sadly behind him. 

Yoda's sigh of disappointment was even worse. 

He flopped down next to Yoda, still gasping for breath, as if he'd spacewalked without a pressure suit. "I can't. It's too big." 

"Size matters not," Yoda said. "Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?" 

Luke looked at his teacher, and smiled wryly. _Honestly? Sometimes, yes._

But he knew it was wrong of him to do so. He got angry and frustrated and impatient with the Jedi master, but it wasn't his petite stature that was problematic - it was his cryptic sayings and unyielding stubbornness to see Luke's point of view that were the problem. So he shook his head and dropped his eyes, unable to measure up to the intensity that gleamed in Yoda's. 

"And well you should _not_ ," Yoda continued, and proceeded give him another lecture on the nature of the Force. "You must feel it... even between the land and that ship!" he finished. 

Luke got to his feet and stared down at Yoda, for once taking advantage of the height difference between them. "You want the impossible," he said, and stalked off to grab his jacket, close his eyes for a few minutes, and consider his next move. _I know I'm a disappointment to you, I know I'm a failure - just let me lick my wounds in peace, okay, Master?_

He _felt_ Yoda reach out with the Force somehow, but he blocked it out of his awareness. He was done with obfuscations and manipulations. He'd been very patient. He'd suffered a lot. He'd tried his best-- no, he'd _done_ his best and it had failed. Now he just wanted to go home. 

_Home_ \- 

Did he even have a home? Tatooine certainly wasn't home anymore, not since the stormtroopers had burned the farm and slaughtered Owen and Beru. Nor had his life been particularly stable since then. For better or worse, home was with Leia and his friends in the Rebellion - wherever they happened to be. Where he was loved and respected. Where he had a purpose beyond toiling for stern taskmaster in this hell realm. 

Hell, he'd settle for just getting off-planet somehow.... anywhere would be better than here--

He didn't realize what was going on until Artoo began whistling frantically to Luke to come and see, it was absolutely unbelievable, there was no possible way this could be happening--

Weary and resigned, he stumbled to his feet, preparing to be disappointed, only to raise his head and see--

\--the tiny figure of Yoda, bent over his stick, his arm outstretched towards the X-wing, and his eyes closed in concentration--

\--and as Luke looked out towards where the ship had fallen, he saw what had justly captured Artoo's attention. 

The X-wing, wreathed in a slimy necklace of water plants, was rising from the depths and into the air, and flying towards him. 

Luke thought Artoo _really_ might short-circuit now. 

He had to step out of the way as Yoda expertly maneuvered the X-wing in for a landing on relatively stable ground. 

Artoo was whistling cheerfully about how they could fix the ship now, they could get off this planet at last, and leave that wretched Yoda creature to his own devices--

Yoda wasn't even breathing hard as Luke approached him. He seemed tired, but no more so than when they'd started training that day. If Luke was any judge of facial expression, he was calm and resigned. He'd just performed the most impressive feat that Luke had ever seen in his whole life - but he wasn't even gloating about it. 

"I--I don't believe it," Luke stammered as he knelt reverently beside his teacher. 

Yoda opened his eyes and looked directly at Luke without blinking. " _That_ is why you fail," he said slowly. 

He hadn't thought his ego could be more bruised than it was already. 

As usual, he'd been completely wrong.

It was another quiet evening in the hut that night.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "old Alderaani song" Luke remembers is a fragment from the Greek poet Pindar in our universe. 
> 
> Also, Luke and Yoda's discussion about mountains and rivers walking is a shout-out to the Mountains and Rivers Sutra by the Japanese Zen teacher Eihei Dogen.

Artoo still couldn't quite understand how Yoda had pulled the X-wing out of the swamp. Even though he'd recorded the whole thing while it was happening, re-playing the scene over and over again didn't seem to help his confusion. 

Artoo was more or less used to Luke doing odd and unfathomable things now with his strange new powers, but those were mostly small aberrations of the known order, and rarely impacted the droid directly. And Luke was a known and trusted quantity, even if he did act irrationally from time to time (as humans typically did). 

Yoda, however, was something else. Luke wasn't exactly sure what to call the relationship between his droid and his teacher, but "friendship" definitely wasn't one of them. It was clear after the X-wing business that Artoo was re-evaluating his opinion of Yoda, and perhaps-- _perhaps_ didn't dislike the old Jedi _quite_ as much as he had at the beginning. It was hard to say - unlike Threepio, Artoo was often more subtle in his expressions of outright dislike. 

Luke couldn't blame the little droid for any existential confusion about the X-wing's suddden and unexpected resurrection. He kept staring in wonder at the ship whenever he passed within sight of its new landing place, kept stopping to stroke its comforting solidity, to remind himself that it wasn't a dream. 

He hadn't known such a thing was possible with the Force. 

It had never even _occurred_ to him that such a thing was possible with the Force. 

He'd seen Ben confuse a host of Stormtroopers with a wave of his hand, and vanish after death to re-appear as a voice in his ear and a spectral vision in a snowstorm. He'd blocked laser blasts he couldn't see with his lightsaber in the _Millenium Falcon_ 's lounge, and made a perfect, one-in-a-million shot to blow up the Death Star without the aid of a targeting computer. He'd lifted his lightsaber a few meters in the air to save himself from death by wampa, not to mention endless rocks for Yoda. He'd known the Force was powerful, but he had never, ever, seen such a blantant display of power before. 

If Luke had been wrong about the power of the Force to lift an X-wing out out of a swamp, what else had he been wrong about? 

Were most of his limits, in fact, erroneous assumptions of his own making, just like Yoda claimed? Would he be able to perform similar feats simply by believing he could? 

It was an exciting, if unsettling, concept. He thought about it a great deal over the next few days as Yoda put him through his paces as if nothing unusual had happened, as if Yoda were not one of the most powerful beings in the entire galaxy. 

Yoda could lift a starship with his _mind_ and he was in hiding from the Emperor and Darth Vader. Did that mean those two were even _stronger_ than Yoda? 

What the fuck was Luke _up_ against? How could he possibly do what two seasoned Jedi like Yoda and Ben had failed to do? 

Eventually, he calmed down enough to realize that perhaps his constant refrain that he "wasn't strong enough" and "never going to finish the training" might be as incorrect as the assumption it was "impossible" to lift an X-wing with the Force. This was also an exciting and unsettling revelation. He wasn't used to the idea that the truths he took for granted might be wrong. 

_If I can't believe everything I think, then how do I know what's true and what's not?_

_Or should I just forget about truth and try--no, that's not right, Yoda would scold me if he heard me say that. What if just *believe* I can succeed? Indulge in what Han would call my 'delusions of grandeur'?_ He couldn't help but smile at the mental image of his friend, leaning over the controls of the _Falcon_ , sassing Luke over the com-channel before, during, and after a battle. 

_You must unlearn what you have learned,_ Yoda had said. At the time, Luke had thought his teacher was crazy. Now, though - he was starting to see the sense of it. 

_I've always let other people define who I am and what I can do. I rebelled against Uncle Owen every chance I could, but his worldview was still the framework around which I judged all my actions. I always thought in such absolute terms: the harvest, or the Academy. Work or play. Boredom, or excitement. Nothing in between._

_Even when Ben offered me everything I'd ever wanted--a chance to get off planet, save a princess and deal a crushing blow to the Empire in the process--my first thought was 'No, I can't, I have to help with the harvest'._ His face flushed as he remembered Ben's skeptical reaction to such a lame excuse. _If the Stormtroopers hadn't tracked the droids back to the farm - I might still be there._

_And I'm still doing it, even now. Maybe not with everything, but all through my training. I keep saying 'I can't,' or 'I'm not good enough,' or 'that's impossible'. No wonder Yoda yells at me so much. It's the same reaction as Ben's, just much less subtle and restrained._

That didn't necessarily mean he _liked_ Yoda any better now, but at least he could see that his teacher had a point. _Maybe I should trust that he knows what he's doing after all and stop struggling so much._

But wouldn't that just be substituting Yoda's framework for the ones he was already carrying? What made him so sure Yoda's was any better? Wouldn't it be better to come up with something that was truly his own? 

Was it possible to be open to the suggestions of others, and stay true to his own experiences at the same time? And what would that even look like? He didn't know. 

He thought of a line from an old Alderaani song Leia used to sing sometimes when she thought no one was listening. _'My soul, do not seek eternal life, but exhaust the realm of the possible.'_ He'd always taken that to mean that it was better to get up off your ass and actually do something to make a difference in the world, rather than spend your whole life afraid of death. It was a good strategy for a starfighter pilot fighting an endless war against tyranny, anyway. 

Now that Luke's definition of 'possible' had abruptly expanded to include all sorts of wonders, he was faced with a different interpretation. If the realm of the possible was much, much bigger than he had ever imagined, what would it take to exhaust such a place?

(And somehow the injunction against pursuing everlasting life was equally suspect after Luke's encounters with the spectral voice of Ben Kenobi. Was Ben really dead? Did this happen to everyone, or only Force users? Was _Vader_ going to come back to haunt him if he defeated the Dark Lord in battle? He wanted to ask Yoda for the details, but kept losing his nerve.) 

At least Artoo had an engaging project in the X-wing's repair to distract him from a vast and confusing universe. Most of the actual damage was cosmetic, but the droid set about his task with vigor and purpose Luke hadn't seen since their arrival. Luke wasn't sure if it was simply the joy of having something useful to do after so much enforced idleness, or if it was to ensure they would, in fact, get off Dagobah eventually. Probably both, he decided one evening, watching Artoo burn off the water-weeds draping the ship with his welding torch. 

"Hey, Artoo," he said, patting the little droid's head companionably. Artoo paused for a moment to whistle appreciatively before resuming the destruction. He seemed to particularly enjoy taking out his frustrations with the planet on any part of it infringing their ship. 

Luke, scanning his ship over with a practiced eye, hastily removed a snake curled up in foliage atop the rear after engine and then another down by the thruster pads. The one downside to having the ship above water was that now all the native lifeforms was moving in, drawn to the heat that radiated from the engines when Artoo ran diagnostic checks. These snakes were both the black and copper-banded variety that was particularly feisty when cornered. He didn't think it damaged the ship the way that mynocks or steelcable bugs would, but he still didn't like it.

Also, he wasn't sure how vigilant Artoo was about checking for local wildlife before using his torch. As much as Luke hated Dagobah, he didn't enjoy cruelty for its own sake. Taking his frustrations out on innocent beings, especially those that weren't actively attacking him, was just wrong. 

Still, it was good for the droid to have a way to be useful, especially with Luke distracted so much of the time. Left to his own devices, Artoo was even starting to speak fondly of Threepio, which almost never happened when the two were together. 

How the little droid put up with his counterpart's anxious fussing, Luke didn't know. Thank goodness for the patience and stubbornness of droids. He supposed that Threepio was family for Artoo, in the same way that Luke was family. Family might be stupidly, incomprehensibly annoying much of the time, but you had to stick together because it was a big galaxy out there and there were a lot of things trying to kill you. It was good to be with people - humans, aliens, droids, however you defined it - who had your back.

He thought of Han and Leia again with a pang. He missed them so much. Hell, _he_ was even starting to miss Threepio, and that was saying something. Threepio meant well, it was true, and had saved Luke's life several times over, but that didn't mean he couldn't be a royal pain in the ass, too... 

Luke still wasn't sleeping well. The nightmares continued, but now with an added twist. As before, he dreamed of Vader's distinctive silhouette striding out of the mist, red saber humming in his hands, breath rattling in measured, mechanical intervals. Suddenly, Vader was obscured by a cloud of smoke, and Luke was standing on a metal grilled platform in some sort of industrial complex. The only light was the blue-white glow of his own lightsaber blade, trying hard to calm his ragged gasps as to block an attack that he knew was coming but couldn't see, even with the Force to guide him. 

Then Han was screaming in his ear, and Leia was shouting in agony in the distance, and Chewie was roaring, too, in a cacophony of noise and pain. The smell of charred flesh and fur was thick in Luke's nostrils, and he woke, shaking and sweating in Yoda's little hut on Dagobah, the night insects chirping quietly in the jungle outside. 

When he finally managed to relax enough to fall asleep again, he inevitably dreamed of flying, of taking his X-wing through an endless series of clouds, soaring arching, graceful loops over a floating city in the atmosphere of some vast gas giant, desperately searching for something just over the horizon. He always woke just before it came into view. 

He didn't know what the dreams meant. He was afraid to mention them to Yoda, for fear they were not an encouraging sign. 

*** 

Now that Luke knew what was possible through the Force, he blasted through his old limits in a matter of days. He was still sore and tired at the end of the day, and his feet were blistering and peeling from the constant damp, but hope and optimism infused him with a heady sense of freedom and achievement that had been missing from his life since the beginning of his training. 

Yoda was pleased, as this only proved his point that Luke's mind was the true source of his problems. Luke was too delighted with his own rapid progress to hold a grudge, especially since Yoda neglected to rub his apprentice's nose in it after he'd made his point with the X-wing. 

This was one of the things he appreciated most about Yoda, actually: the complete lack of self-aggrandizement. It was strange to spend time with someone so competent who saw little need to ever mention his own achievements, even when directly asked. It wasn't modesty, exactly, or that Yoda failed to notice his own strengths. He just didn't seem to consider them that important somehow. 

Luke had spent most of his adolescence bush-piloting with the local kids on Tatooine, where a certain amount of machismo was expected. He'd never really fit into the standard code, but he'd enjoyed his hard-won victories in impromptu dune races with a certain amount of flair. His pilots in Rogue Squadron were a _little_ more mature, but there was still a healthy celebration of ego involved after every successful mission, if only as a coping mechanism for grief and pain over their fallen comrades. Even the Rebellion high command, like General Rieekan and Mon Mothma, effectively made their competence known if circumstances required it. 

But somehow Yoda was beyond even that. Luke was surprised how refreshing it was to be with someone who was utterly beyond the posturing and pretenses, who felt no need to hide who he truly was--and no need to brag about it, either. 

After so many failures, it was amazing how encouraging a simple nod or smile from Yoda could be. He hadn't realized until now how much a single word or expression from his teacher could shift his mood - and with it, his abilities. It was also clear now how much Luke's frustrations growing up on Tatooine were due to Uncle Owen's similarities to Yoda - straight talk, frustrating answers to simple questions, and praise only when your actions truly merited it. 

_I wish I had known that back then - maybe then we wouldn't have spent that last season butting heads over every little thing._ Like any thought of his murdered relatives, he was filled with guilt and regret. _Maybe if I had told him how much it meant to me, we could have--_

But the past, cruel as it was, was over. Owen and Beru were dead, and he'd arrived too late to save them. The only thing he could do now was continue his training, and defeat the Empire so that nobody else had to die. That was his task, and he embraced it. 

As Luke blossomed under Yoda's encouragement, he wondered how much of his new rapport with the Force was psychological and how much was due to his own genuine improvement. 

"A difference, is there?" was Yoda's unhelpful response - but delivered with a tiny wink that left Luke confused to whether his master was actually _joking_ with him.

Luke shrugged and let the matter rest. _Probably both,_ he decided privately. 

Whatever the cause of Luke's improvement, it put Yoda in a more talkative mood. His teacher shared more stories of the old Jedi with his student now, though still very little from the last few decades of the Old Republic and the Clone Wars. 

From the way Yoda described the old Jedi - consummate diplomats and peacemakers to the core - it sounded like Leia would have been a prime candidate had she been Force-sensitive. _Yoda probably would have preferred someone like her over me!_ Luke thought after one particularly lengthy anecdote involving a trading dispute on an inner core world called Naboo. All this talk of politics was exactly the sort of action that made Luke's head spin, but Leia thrived on it. She'd been born to it, true, but it was her talent, more than her pedigree, made her an indispensable resource for the Rebellion time and time again. 

Of all the people he knew, Leia might actually have a chance at winning a battle of wits with Yoda. He couldn't imagine Leia meekly accepting the old Jedi's orders without a struggle, or accepting Yoda's bullshit excuses and non-answers. They would have words, Luke decided, and he was disappointed he would never be able to watch the results of such a conflict from a suitably safe distance. 

_Perhaps low orbit,_ he decided, smothering a grin at the mental image. _Or perhaps orbiting a different system entirely!_

Yet the thought of her also came with a deep sense of loneliness. He missed her and Han so much. He hoped she was all right, wherever she was - hopefully, safe with rest of the Alliance troops at the rendezvous. He hoped she wasn't worrying about _him_. 

He hoped she wasn't screaming the way she screamed in his dreams - as if she were back on the Death Star, under Imperial interrogation - 

Luke didn't like the thought of any being in pain. There were a lot of things in pain on Tatooine; it was a fact of life, but it wasn't one he could accept without a struggle. Still it was a hard life in the desert, and he'd seen so many people harden as their dreams and opportunities dried out under the harsh glare of the double suns. He'd tried very hard not to let it harden him, too. 

Once, when he was about twelve or so, he'd maimed a womp rat with a clumsy shot. Even one arm and a chunk of its face blown off, it had managed to lunge for his throat and he'd managed to put it out of its misery (and his) with a frantic, clumsy blow to the head that was more luck than skill at such point blank range. Even then, it had taken a long time for the light in its red eyes to fade. After that he'd resolved to kill cleanly with the first strike, to avoid so much suffering. He was grateful that as a pilot, death in battle tended to be quick and clean, and over in a moment. 

Even the destruction of the Death Star, the biggest military blow to the Empire that Luke had personally delivered with his own hand, had been over quickly. He didn't think he could have lived with himself had it been otherwise. Even in wartime, some things were still-- _sacred_.

There were some cries, though, that never went away. He thought of the water beggars he'd seen on trips to Bestine for supplies, or even in Anchorhead. Uncle Owen had gruffly ignored them, and encouraged Luke to do the same, but it was so _hard_ , to walk on by and do _nothing_ \--

Mos Eisley had been worse. He'd grown up knowing there were slaves on Tatooine -- though none in the human settlements around the Lars' farm, thank goodness - but he'd rarely seen them until that trip with Ben to the planet's one major spaceport. He'd heard rumors of Hutt cartels all his life, but it was one thing to gossip in the safety of the Tosche Station general store, and another thing to see tiny children wandering the streets with restraining bolts clipped to their ears, just like droids. 

It was bad enough when it was a stranger in pain. It was worse if it was someone he knew, someone he cared about, and exponentially worse if it were _Leia_. Leia in pain was the worst thing he could imagine - even worse than his own pain. He twitched, nervous and agitated just thinking about it, and tried to focus back in on Yoda's story, hoping his master hadn't noticed his student's momentary slip in attention. 

He hoped these dreams were just a process of his subconscious and not some ominous sign of danger.

Leia was all right. She had to be. 

Right? 

He just wished his subconscious would take the hint and let him sleep. 

***

One day there was an unexpected break in the routine. After meditation, Yoda led Luke out into the swamp before Artoo could follow them. Despite forgoing breakfast, Luke was too curious and intrigued to complain. As his stomach growled, he remembered his decision to trust Yoda, so he refrained from peppering his teacher with unnecessary questions. He would find out what their purpose was soon enough. 

They walked in soft, diffused grey of the pre-dawn light, down side trails and cramped passageways between trees that Luke had never seen before, for what felt like hours. Even if Artoo had been able to keep up, there would have been no room for him through some of those tight spots. Yoda, of course, could pass through with ease, but Luke had to scramble and contort himself to fit through one especially narrow opening. He was just grateful that there seemed to be fewer snakes along this particular route, and the ones he did spot were too sluggish to be particularly annoyed about a human stomping through their territory. 

The night insects fell silent and all was hushed. Luke wriggled free from the last crevice and stepped out into an open clearing overlooking a vast marshland spreading out towards the horizon in front of him. He gasped in shock at the sudden vista, and at one especially dramatic piece in particular. 

Looming out of the mist was a tree, with vast sloping branches of stubby green needles that stretched out in almost every direction from the massive trunk. It was the largest tree he had ever seen in his life. Oh, maybe the trees on Kashyyyk were wider and taller if you compared the measurements, but he'd never actually set foot on the Wookiee homeworld and holos couldn't capture their grandeur and majesty enough for him to be able to compare them to this one. He'd been to a number of planets since joining the Rebellion, but he still hadn't had much experience with genuine forests in the urban slums and barren wastelands where his missions took him. 

Only the jungle around the Rebel base on Yavin IV came close, and even then, the towering kopak trees with their flaring buttress roots couldn't match this one for breadth and splendor since their lowest branches were several hundred meters above the ground in a dense canopy that bathed the ground below in perpetual shadows. Even from a distance, Luke estimated that the Dagobah tree's lowest branch rivalled the main trunk of a kopak in circumference. 

The native plant life on Tatooine tended towards short, prickly and leafless shrubs, jammed into shadowy crevices and rocky washes where moisture might briefly condense and accumulate overnight - but nothing above a meter. Even then, most plants were small, twisted rosettes, barely spreading above the ground, fighting for every scrap of precious water they could get. Cultivated species were usually kept dense and bushy to maximize production and space in the commercial greenhouses - never allowed to deviate from the clipped, functional pruning regimes into something more wild and free. 

He'd never seen anything like it here on Dagobah, either. Most of the trees here were bent and twisted, draped by leafless lianas or dense patches of lichen, devoid of anything recognizable as leaves. They perched half-submerged in the turgid waters and mud flats, boasting chaotic spiderwebs of aerial roots that kept them from vanishing completely into the muck. Luke had always wondered how they managed to survive in such unwelcoming conditions, but it would have remained a mystery if Yoda had not taken it upon himself to instruct his student in the more subtle connections between the Jedi and the landscape. 

"Breathe through their bark they do," Yoda had commented absently one day, brushing a wrinkled hand over an example, showing Luke the tiny pores in the trunk he had never noticed before. "Flexible are they. Always ready for whatever is present. A good model for a Jedi." He gave the trunk an affectionate pat. 

"Plants _breathe_?" Luke had asked, unable to keep the wonder about of his voice. For a moment, he was a wide-eyed farmboy from a desert world, facing the galaxy for the first time. 

Yoda waved his stick about. "Always in motion is the universe. Breathing in - and breathing out. Walking forward and walking backwards. Plants--animals--mountains--rivers--continents. Entire planets and systems. Stars are born--live--and die over the course of eons." He paused for a moment, weighing his words with care. "And through these motions, the Force comes into being. A Jedi _flows_ with the Force, walking with the mountains and rivers at their own pace." 

Okay, botany lessons were one thing, but this was a little much. "Master, a Jedi walking looks nothing like a mountain or a river walking," Luke said, though privately he doubted whether mountains actually _could_ walk. Better not to even start _that_ particular argument now. 

"Looks like your walking it does not," Yoda agreed readily. Too readily. Luke sensed a trap here, but it was too late to do anything about it now. "Yet because you cannot see it, you think it does not exist. Pssht." He tapped the ground with his stick, and turned to Luke. "Do not think that because you cannot perceive it, it does not exist. You will learn in time, in time." 

Now, though, looking at the massive tree before him, Luke started to think that his teacher had been right, yet again. There was something special about this tree, some sort of internal harmony that he could sense through his connection with the Force. 

"Last of its kind on this world, this tree is," Yoda said at his side. Luke knelt down so he could hear him better. "Special, it is. Planted at every Jedi temple was this tree, with branches taken from its parents thousands of years ago, long before my time." For someone like Yoda, whose memory stretched back for over nine hundred years, it was almost beyond the span of human comprehension. 

"Destroyed them all, the Empire did. Along with the Jedi. Hmmph." Yoda frowned for a moment, before continuing. "Perhaps there may be some on other worlds--forgotten. Perhaps this is the last." He coughed. "Difficult to say." 

"I have to go out there," Luke said, before he could stop himself. He wasn't sure if that was part of Yoda's plan or not, but he felt--a deep compulsion issuing from the tree, one that he didn't want to fight. 

It were as if the tree were _calling_ to him. 

Yoda simply nodded. "Yessss." 

He unclipped the lightsaber from his belt, and dropped it on the ground beside the Jedi Master. He didn't think he was going to need it. Perhaps he'd learned his lesson at the cave, or perhaps it was because the presence he sensed emanating from the tree--whatever it was--felt so unthreatening. Powerful, yes--but not harmful. Not cold and unfriendly and full of death like the cave. 

It was the first living being he'd sensed on Dagobah that felt like it wasn't trying to antagonize him. 

It was the first time he'd felt like he might actually be coming home. 

The way to the tree looked like a straight slog through the marsh land, in knee-deep muck or worse, but he was pleasantly surprised to discover a series of stepping stones at the edge of the surface that were only visible once you had stepped into the marsh itself. He bounded from platform to platform quickly enough once he picked up the knack for anticipating where the stones would be. 

When he paused long enough to look back, Yoda's tiny frame was lost in a sea of mist. The only sound was his own beating hard and the occasional croaking cry of some sort of water creature. 

No snakes, though. That, at least, was a good sign. This was already several measures of improvement over the cave. 

As he approached, the tree loomed over him, growing larger and larger until he was almost to its vast base, which he thought was wider than Yoda's entire house. _We could live in that tree,_ was the absurd thought that flashed through his mind. _Build a treehouse. Stay out of the mud. Be... above all this. Why doesn't he do that?_

Quick as lightning before a Tatooine sandstorm, another thought flickered. _It... wouldn't be right somehow to live here. This tree is special. Alone, apart. Home. But not a place to come with an every day mind._ It was a foreign concept to him, one he thought would take some getting used to. He shrugged and kept going. 

Up close, he could see that the tree's massive trunk and sprawling root system perched at the top of a small island, several meters above the surface of the marsh, so different from the native trees. _So that's how it can survive here,_ he thought. _The Jedi brought it with them - must have been thousands of years ago, given how big it is now. It's not native to this place, but it's.... adapted. It found a way to flourish. And now--_

Here he was. Luke Skywalker, erstwhile Jedi apprentice, staring up into the branches of this massive tree, the grey clouds utterly blotted out by the leafy canopy above him. _What happens now?_

He stepped onto solid ground, his footsteps insulated by the dense carpet of needles obscuring everything. He bent and dug his finger into the ground - at least a meter thick, if not more, of dense, spongy leaves in various stages of decay. He felt around for a surface root, heavy and twisted and solid underneath his hand. The coppery bark was dense and spongy, pulling away from the trunk in thick strands. Thick burls with tiny green shoots were everywhere, popping up in half-circles far away from the main body, which also teemed with smaller shoots, not visible from a distance. He breathed in the sharp, distinctive notes of evergreen needles, not the fetid stench of anaerobically decaying slime.

He savored the deep, rich scent of this place, and exhaled as slowly as he could, clearing his mind and letting himself fall open to the Force. _What must I do?_

And the answer bubbled up from the depths of his being as if he had shouted it: _Climb._. 

So he did. Like the trek across the marsh, it wasn't particularly difficult once he got the hang of it--there were branches everywhere, massive ones, so he barely had to struggle to gain altitude. The bark itself was so soft and fibrous that he could solidly wedge his fingers in between the cracks and fissures and pull himself along. He'd spent so much time climbing hand over fist with Yoda in tow that this was nothing in comparison. The needles themselves looked sharp and ominous from a distance, but were pliable and feathery to touch, spiraling over the branches to maximize their exposure to the available light. 

From a distance, the tree was suffused by a soft, diffused glow, bluer and cooler than the crackling flares of phosphorescent marsh gases he was used to seeing on the ground level. At first he thought it was a trick of the light, and then he thought that dawn was coming on quickly, letting a little more light in through the omnipresent gloom that shrouded the planet. As he climbed higher, and examined individual branches more closely, the true source revealed itself: fat, phosphorescent worms that wriggled and writhed when he jostled them. Each contact sent a wave of light snaking outward from his hand in all directions, and the caterpillars - or whatever they were - would occasionally blink in and out of their own accord, seemingly at random. 

Whatever functions it might serve, the tree was a hotbed of life for creatures great and small. Luke saw tiny insects clinging to the bark, and large, fuzzy spiders hiding amidst the clumps of aerial moss that dangled from the branches. There were nests of varying sizes and shapes, including one so big that Luke could have comfortably taken a nap inside it--especially since it was lined with the softest down, feathers from some mysterious bird. He wasn't sure he wanted to meet its makers, though, and was relieved that it appeared to be empty. There were snakes and lizards aplenty -- he gave those a wide berth -- and tiny, brightly colored amphibians swimming in puddles in the crevices and hollows in the bark. 

He'd never seen anything like it - so big, so quiet, so still, yet so unambiguously _alive_ and present. The only sound was his ragged breathing as he climbed higher and higher towards the summit and whatever fate seemed to be waiting for him up there. He knew he would recognize whatever it was when he saw it, the way he had in the cave. 

At last, he made it to the highest great limb, dizzy from so much exertion on an empty stomach. He'd never been prone to altitude sickness - a death sentence for a starfighter pilot - but certainly the oxygen levels weren't as high here, and his heart was working harder than it would at ground level. The tree still extended further rising several meters to a sharp conical point, but none of the branches looked large enough to support his weight and he feared the consequences of a fall from such a height. 

He'd expected a view, but there was nothing to see. Everything was shrouded in the same thick, pervasive mist that covered Dagobah. There was no sign of the sun through the clouds, even at such a height. His world was reduced to his own familiar body and the tree around him; everything else was vapor and air. The glow-worms flickered rapidly through their cycle, sending light cascading everywhere for a moment, before fading as he stilled himself and waited, leaning against the trunk (even at this height, it was bigger than he was), letting his breath soften and slow. 

All sense of time slowed to a crawl, devoid of any meaningful measure outside of his own heartbeat. Gradually, he became aware that he was glowing, that his body was suffused with the same phosphorescent glow as the worms. It snaked across his exposed skin in gleaming channels of varying thickness that ebbed and flowed in steady pulses as he stared in wonder. Everything in his body was glowing, yet somehow he could see the differences between various parts of his body - those distinctions were not lost, despite the underlying unity. 

The tree was glowing, too. Luke could pick out every individual life form, every separate cell, that gleamed across the branches, snaking inward and outward, connected to the tree, to him, to everything in the entire galaxy. Images poured into his head, a constant, steady flow of sensations that his brain was interpreting as vision even though he was fairly certain his physical eyes were of limited use in this realm. 

_Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter,_ Yoda had said. Now Luke could see the truth of that statement for himself. If he looked down, he could see the tree's rolling trunk (somehow fused to his own upright spine), plunging into the depths of the earth, diffusing into twining roots that curved through every available pore of soil, mingling with vast fungal networks and microbial communities that dwelled there. Looking up, he saw brilliant streams that penetrated the clouds and connected him to the twirling stars, gleaming brightly in the vastness of space that was no longer black emptiness but teaming with light. The central core of the galaxy throbbed in time to his own breath, in an endless, steady rhythm. He was connected to everything, an integral part of the universe -- and yet he was totally and completely himself, more grounded and present and _awake_ than he had ever been. 

He didn't hate anything. Nothing was trying to kill him, and even if so, it didn't matter. There was no aggression, no anger, but there was nothing to be angry about and no one to attack, even if he had been so inclined. He was suffused with the deep calm of the ancient tree as the Force moved through them both, and there was no separation 

There just weren't _words_ in Basic to describe something like this, Luke thought later, trying to reconstruct the exact sequence of events in his mind and failing utterly. Whatever it was resided beyond effort, beyond striving, beyond logic and rationality. It was perfectly real, but inaccessible except by the methods that Yoda had taught him, which no longer felt so foreign to him. 

There was still darkness, but somehow he knew that stripped of the negative emotions that accompanied it, the darkness was part of the light, and they merged into each other in an endless streaming web. The darkness was no different from any other part of the universe - just another form by which the universe revealed itself to its inhabitants. 

For a long time, there was no 'Luke Skywalker', only simple awareness. And a deep, abiding calm. 

***

He didn't remember much of the climb down. He was still suffused with such peace, that all other considerations were secondary as he shimmied down the tree. His tree. It was a part of him now, no matter how where he was or what he was doing. It was always with him, whenever he needed it. 

All he had to do was remember. 

"See the light inside you," Yoda said, when Luke returned to where he'd left his master on the shoreline. "Yes?" 

"Yes," Luke said, picking up his lightsaber and clipping it back onto his belt. 

"Good. Very good." That was all, but from Yoda, it was high praise indeed. 

Luke hadn't thought it was possible to glow any more than he was already glowing, even though his luminous visions had long since faded. But it wasn't pride at his accomplishment - it was simply - acceptance. A long-awaited welcome. 

_Love,_ even, if he dared to be so sentimental about it. Because love was what gave a Jedi his connection to the light - though it wasn't the harsh, greedy grasping he realized he'd previously associated with the word. Nor was it strictly physical. It was a kind of love that filled his spirit as well as his body, a love that was as calm and open and compassionate as the tree, a feeling he might lose but could always find his way back to if he calmed himself enough. It was good and fair and true and _right_ , more so than anything he had ever felt in his life. This was the kind of love that made the old Jedi a force to be reckoned with.

They walked back to the hut in silence, the dawn chorus starting up all around them as the creatures of the swamp began their morning at last. The rest of the day passed like a blur. Not even Artoo's worried scolding at their return could bring him down. It was Luke's happiest time on Dagobah. 

It was also the beginning of the end.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a brief description of torture - it's not anything more graphic than what's shown on-screen in _The Empire Strikes Back_ , but if that's not your thing, feel free to skip that section. 
> 
> The udambara flower is based off the Buddhist udumbara flower, although it looks very, very different. Real-life udumbara are figs from _Ficus racemosa_ \- technically an inward-turning fruit called a synconium - but in a galaxy far, far away, udambara are thousand-petaled floating water flowers, like water lilies or sacred lotus. Someday I may write the fic about Luke's experiences in the Yavin IV jungles following ANH where he encounters them for the first time; they make quite the impression.

Time didn't flow right on Dagobah. He didn't know how long he'd been here, how far he still had to go, and what might happen next outside the daily routine. He didn't think so much about leaving now, even though he knew he could fire up the X-wing at any moment if he chose. His life had narrowed to the small sphere of the training, and it was hard to imagine anything outside of it. Even his recurring nightmares of Vader, Han, and Leia, and that endless field of clouds seemed very distant and far away a few moments after waking. Every day slid into the next, exactly the same, yet completely different, seamlessly slipping from any attempts to grasp at particulars. 

By this point, he'd given up trying. 

And then, abruptly, it was over, with a swiftness and severity that left him reeling from the sudden shift, a confusion that only grew stronger as one by one, the constants of his life were stripped away in the events that followed. The deep irony was that he'd literally seen it coming for a long time - he just hadn't known what it _meant_ until his life exploded like a thermal detonator in his face. 

A thermal detonator might have hurt less, actually. At least then the only wounds would be physical. 

He would have said his departure was like waking from a dream, but his life on Dagobah had a vivid intensity that belied such a description. It was difficult for him to say what was more "real" anymore. 

In the end, it didn't matter. Leia was the only person who might have understood him if he tried to explain it, and he didn't have a chance to discuss it with her for a long time afterwards. 

It all happened so goddamn _fast_. 

***

He balanced on his hands in the muck, dripping with exertion after a hard run while Yoda stood nearby, gently coaching him. As usual, Artoo was there as well, watching Luke from what the droid had determined through trial and error was a comparatively safe distance. There was a heaviness to the atmosphere beyond the usual humidity, an electric tension that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle in a way he'd come to associate with approaching thunderstorms. But for the moment, all was calm. 

It was just another day in the swamp, but with a key difference - not only was Luke stacking several rocks at a time with his mind now, he was also lifting a few of his shipboard trunks as well. He'd never managed to hold so many items at once before - let alone for so long. But today his normal perceptions of distance and time were curiously muted, and the entire universe was flooded with potential. 

Sometimes the Force appeared to him as instinctive reflexes twisting him down out of the way before one of Yoda's missiles could hit him. Sometimes it emerged as the deepest whisperings of the heart outside and beyond of his conscious mind, gradually seeping into his awareness when he meditated. Today, though, he felt himself floating in a subtle sea, buffered by currents of energy that his mind insisted as interpreting as light. It wasn't light, exactly, but he accepted the limitations of the metaphor for what they were and didn't press too hard to figure it out. 

Figuring things out, in fact, was the best way to break his concentration and that meant falling over on his face. It'd taken several especially nasty falls and several lectures from Yoda before Luke realized that letting go of striving yielded the best results. 

What else could he do in a state like this? 

He twitched slightly, and Artoo rose a meter in the air, now at the same level as the floating trunks. Artoo whined for a moment, motors whirring fiercely, before the droid processed what was happening and surrendered to the inevitable. Artoo didn't like it when Luke practiced on him -- it messed with his worldview -- but he'd grudgingly come to accept it as another one of the odd things "his" human did. (Despite Threepio's servile suggestions to the contrary, Luke was convinced that Artoo was more possessive of Luke than the other way around.) Artoo had even started to incorporate these abilities into his probability calculations, which he would occasionally quote for Luke regardless of Luke's interest in the outcome at hand. 

"Good... calm... yes...." Yoda said in approval, drawing out each of the syllables in turn. He'd been especially relaxed since their visit to the Jedi Tree, which Luke interpreted as a favorable sign. The unexpected onslaughts had mostly abated, and the mood in the hut most evenings was mellow and calm. 

To Luke's surprise and chagrin, he'd even been _enjoying_ himself sometimes, as he mastered each challenge Yoda set for him and continued to improve. He didn't think he'd ever really understand the old Jedi, but their relationship had shifted from adversarial to almost... _companionable_. It was a dramatic improvement from the early days. 

"Through the Force, things you will see. Other places, the future, the past, old friends long gone." Yoda sighed. There was a pang in his voice that made Luke ache in sympathy. What would it be like to be so old and alone, the last of the Jedi, his friends betrayed and slaughtered?

Luke knew what it was like to wake up every morning with regrets for the lost comrades who would never fly with him again; knew what it was like to mourn the fallen. It was bad enough with Owen, Beru, and Ben, not to mention his fellow Rebels. He ached just thinking about Dak slumped behind him in the snowspeeder, seconds before an Imperial walker crushed it, the screams of the Rogue Squadron fighters over the intercom before their ships exploded and the sound cut out. 

It must be ten times worse for Yoda. 

_How would I feel if all of my friends were slaughtered and I hadn't been able to save them? Especially their killer was someone I knew and trusted - and still walks free? How would I ever be able to forgive myself?_ How had Yoda even managed it? 

Of course, the ordeal hadn't ended there. _Twenty years in solitude would make anybody a little crazy,_ Luke had to admit, even though he'd long abandoned his belief in Yoda's insanity. Yoda enjoyed pretending to be foolish, but so far it was always as a ruse to teach Luke very memorable lessons. But still - what had his life been like before Luke had crash-landed into it? 

_Even Ben came out to Anchorhead for supplies now and then. There's nothing close to that here. Yoda doesn't even have droids to talk to, the way I did on the farm growing up. I don't know if I could handle such isolation..._ Even though he knew from his vision at the tree that nothing in the universe was ever really separate from anything else, it still didn't _feel_ right to spend so much time alone. Maybe Yoda could handle it, but humans certainly weren't built that way. 

A wave of loneliness spread through him. _Friends... I want to see my friends...._

And then he was soaring through the familiar, endless sea of clouds, just as he did in his dreams. As they peeled away to reveal the perfect blue sky beyond, he saw he was approaching a shining silver city - some sort of atmospheric space station, though an odd, alien style he'd never seen before. 

With a sudden jerk, he went _through_ the city, into some sort of cell. It had clearly been designed with humans in mind, because Chewbacca was crouched down in a corner to keep from slamming his head against the ceiling. And either Han had finally made good on his threat to take the droid apart or Threepio had run into trouble, because the gold-plated limbs were scattered across the cell. Judging from the way Chewie's shoulders were hunched, and his occasional mournful howl, Luke guessed it was the latter. 

Chewie was holding Threepio's head in one hand and torso in the other and fiddling with a screwdriver as he pieced the parts together. Nothing seemed to work, though, and he kept slamming the screwdriver against the ground in frustration. There was no one else was in the cell with him, which was odd, because--

_Han. Where's Han?_

He blinked and he was in a different cell now, watching white-masked Stormtroopers, strapping Han into a gurney. Han's nose was bloody and a black eye was blossoming along the right side of his face - he clearly had not gone quietly into custody. They lowered him down towards a complicated and clearly unfriendly machine full of needles and electrodes. Lights flickered and alarms flashed all around them in sharp, staccato shrieks.

Luke was vaguely aware he was awake on Dagobah and this was all a dream, but he was swept up in rush and flow of sensation, numb with horror at the scene that was unfolding in front of him. Han's form had vanished from sight, lost in a sea of neon tubes and wires. And then the screaming started. 

_Stop it,_ Luke begged, _please, stop--_ but he didn't seem to have a body here, and no one in the room seemed to register his presence let alone hear him. _Han--!_

Torture, the Alliance High Command had stressed, was painful by definition, and everyone broke eventually under the pressure - it was not a sign of weakness. "The question is not that you'll talk, but when," was the grim conclusion. "So be prepared to tell them all sorts of lies, right from the start, and keep telling lies, so they won't recognize the truth when they hear it." 

That was what Leia had done - lie after lie, over and over again, keep the agents guessing as much as possible. After Tarkin had called out her ruse about Dantooine, she'd told him Alderaan was the rebel base, poor doomed Alderaan that had already destroyed been destroyed. Tarkin hadn't liked that one bit. And then she'd named other dead, uninhabited, isolated systems, ones that would take the Empire weeks to rule out completely--

Except this didn't seem like an interrogation session. The two Stormtroopers kept jacking up the dials, and Han kept screaming, on and on and on. But there were no pauses for relief, no questions asked. It was the most sadistic and cruel thing Luke had ever seen, and so fundamentally _pointless_. It was as if they just wanted to hurt him. 

It made no sense. None of it made any sense. 

"Leia," Han gasped. "Look, I don't know what you want, but I'll do anything, tell you anything, if you don't hurt Leia--" 

_Leia--oh, no--what happened to LEIA--where is she--LEIA--_

He saw that, too.

Leia's mouth was set in a grim line and her eyes were tighter than he had ever seen before. Unlike Han, she was used to pain, had been tortured before, and it was clear she had no intention of giving her captors the satisfaction of seeing her break. She was staring at Darth Vader with the coldest expression Luke had ever seen, chillier than a bleak, delirious night in a snowstorm on Hoth. Hidden behind the mask, Vader's face was unreadable, yet something in his posture told Luke that the Dark Lord respected this show of defiance, even as he attempted to crush it underfoot. 

Leia gasped, clutching her throat as Vader raised a hand and sent the Force coursing towards her. Underneath her agony was a cold, hard rage, and it was clear that she saw this as a reflexive, knee-jerk reaction for survival, nothing more. 

It was certainly not a surrender. 

Her eyes never left Vader, even when he released his grasp and let her stagger back, breathing hard. Her eyes said she would bear witness. She would remember all of this and pay it back to the Empire a thousand fold. It was just as well for Vader that her hands were bound or else Luke though she might hit him. 

What had happened? He thought Han and Chewie had left for Tatooine to go pay off Jabba the Hutt - why were Leia and Threepio with them? How had they ended up in Imperial custody on this strange city, and why-- 

He saw Leia twitch in surprise, and realized she was staring directly at him. Her eyes focused wide as she mouthed his name, clearly unwilling to say it aloud and alert her tormentor to his prescence. Luke saw Vader turn his head to follow Leia's gaze and there was a catch in the mechanical rattle of breath--

Abruptly, Luke was back in his body on Dagobah, still upside-down with his hands planted on solid ground. His eyes opened, widened. He wobbled. "Han-- _Leia_ \--!" 

All his control with the Force left him and he fell, tangled in an awkward heap of limbs but thankfully unhurt. Everything suspended in mid-air fell along with him - including Artoo, with a strangled squeal of betrayal.

At least he hadn't taken Yoda down with him this time. 

Yoda sighed. "Control, control, you must _control_ \--" 

Everything was so fuzzy. He couldn't remember how his muscles worked anymore. It took a moment before the words came out right. "I saw--I saw a city in the clouds..." The one in his dream. He'd dreamed it so many times before. 

Yoda's face twitched. "Mmm, yes. Friends you have there." 

_How does he know? Did he see it, too?_ But he was too shaken to be distracted by tangents. He had to tell Yoda what he had seen. "They were in pain."

Yoda nodded slowly. "It is the future you see." 

"The future?" Luke stared, dumbfounded. He had never even suspected this as a possibility. A dream, a delusion, a nightmare, a crazy manifestation of his subconscious, like his vision in the cave -- but he'd never even thought it might be real. It _couldn't_ be real. _The future? Oh, no--_

He got to his feet, clutching his head, trying to fight the mounting sense of panic. Panic was dangerous, panic was what got you killed, whether you were attacked by Tusken Raiders in the Tatooine desert or lost and alone in a snowstorm on Hoth; he couldn't feel the Force when he was panicked because there was no room for anything else - and yet it was all he could do not to show the turmoil on his face. 

He whipped around to Yoda, one question above all us. "Will they die?" His voice broke a little on the last word, and it didn't matter, nothing mattered except the all-important answer. 

He knew he was asking his teacher for a miracle. He wasn't sure why, exactly-- hadn't he rescued Leia from Vader before? What was so bad about this?--and yet he knew this was worse. Leia didn't look like she expected rescue. Something had gone horribly wrong in the evacuation on Hoth, and somehow Vader had captured the people Luke loved most in the world--

He didn't want to hear Yoda's confirmation. He hoped against hope that Yoda would tell him no, everything would be fine, the Alliance was coming for them, and everything would be okay, even though he knew deep in his bones that such comforts would be a lie. As long as Yoda didn't speak, anything was possible. 

The question would rip and tear their lives apart. It already had. But Luke asked anyway, because he had to know. Because he couldn't live with not knowing the answer. 

He never doubted for a moment that Yoda would know.

He knew Yoda wouldn't lie to him. 

Yoda closed his eyes and sighed deeply. The seconds ticked out, each one stretching out endlessly just when Luke needed them to go faster. "Difficult to see," he said at last, opening his eyes and meeting Luke's gaze directly. "Always in motion is the future."

As usual, it was a complete non-answer. And yet, it was answer enough. 

"I've got to go to them," Luke said, and started towards the hut to gather his things. There was no hesitation whatsoever. He didn't know the name of that mysterious city or where in the galaxy it was, but he could put Artoo to work with the X-wing's computer and they'd figure it out. That was the least of his problems right now. 

He hadn't felt this--desperately heroic since that day on the Death Star when he'd learned of Leia's impending execution, and had shamed Han and Chewie into orchestrating a jailbreak. 

Only this time, he was alone. And this time, he'd have to face Darth Vader himself. And Luke had seen enough of war and battle to know that they didn't always end well. 

(Last time, Vader had _let_ them escape. This time, Luke didn't think that was the Empire's plan at all.) 

And he had a feeling that Vader knew he was coming. That Vader had, in fact, _seen him_ in those last few seconds of his vision--

Luke expected Yoda to protest or object. At the very least, he expected a guilt trip. _What about your promise? You promised to finish the training._ It wasn't like Yoda to let Luke have the last word. 

But when Yoda spoke, his words ripped through Luke's heart, tearing it in two. 

"Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could--but you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered." 

Luke stared. His eyes flickered from his teacher to the memory of Han's tortured screams and Leia's choking grimace in that horrible vision of the future and back again. No. No. No. It couldn't be. It wasn't--there was that word again-- _possible_. 

Yet after what had happened at the cave--and with the X-wing--how could he doubt his teacher's word? 

But it was equally unthinkable that he could abandon Han and Leia to such a hideous fate. 

Luke nodded slightly, unable to speak. He stumbled away from Yoda, back towards the hut, heedless of Artoo's frantic beeping behind him. The pressure in the air cracked as the rain came down in a torrent and lightning flared, silhouetting the swamp in ghost-light before it vanished. 

He heard, as if from far away, the distant rumble of thunder. 

***

The night that followed was one of the longest of Luke's life. It rained heavily for the rest of the day and into the night, a deep drenching downpour so thick he could barely see in front of him. There was no hope of packing the X-wing until the storm abated, though Luke made a show of gathering his few possessions in Yoda's hut into a backpack before his teacher retired for the evening. 

He ate a ration bar and tasted nothing, hit his head twice on the ceiling in the same damn spot, tossed the snake curled up in the corner out the window, and sat cross-legged facing the wall to shut out any sight of Yoda, who had been eerily quiet and withdrawn since their last exchange. Luke was grateful for the reticence - he couldn't bear to meet Yoda's piercing eyes, see the all-too-familiar disappointment written there. 

_Whatever I do, it's wrong. I can't win. There's no way I can win. But I can't let my friends die, I can't--_

He burned with tension, restless and agitated, unable to keep the images out of his head. They were all he saw when he closed his eyes. His body ached with exhaustion but he dared not sleep, lest he fall back into those awful dreams again-- the dreams that spoke of the future. 

He knew he needed to slow down, pause, relax, rest - he couldn't touch the Force when he was rushing like this - but he couldn't make his mind work properly. He was caught up in the panic, the rush and the fear and it overwhelmed any rational arguments. Damn the rain, damn this planet, damn everything. He had to leave right away--he had to save Han and Leia--

_If it was the future, then I still have time -- perhaps they're not in danger yet -- perhaps I can stop them before Vader captures them--_

Yoda's words haunted him. " _If you leave now, help them you could, but you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered._ " 

What did that mean? How could it be wrong for him to help his friends? How would that endanger the Alliance, and the freedom of the galaxy? He was just one person, one player in a larger game. He couldn't possibly endanger their cause by saving Han and Leia, just the opposite. He didn't doubt that it was risky and dangerous, but he couldn't let it go.

_What if it's ME Vader wants-- and not them? What if he's using them to lure me in--keep me from finishing my training--_

Did it matter, though? Did that change the fact that his friends were suffering, or did it just mean that Luke was responsible for it? All the more reason for him to go to their aid, then. 

_But if Vader captures me, then I-- If I die facing him, then--_

_"You would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered."_

No. There had to be another way. Somehow--there had to be another way. 

He thought about what Yoda had said to him, over and over, whenever Luke insisted on moving ahead in his training before Yoda thought he was ready. "You will be ready when you know who you are." 

Who was he, really? Luke Skywalker, son of Anakin. Farmboy from Tatooine, hero of the Rebellion, commander of Rogue Squadron. Twenty-three years old.

No. All that was true enough, but it didn't go deep enough. 

What mattered more, his training and his promise to Yoda? Freedom and justice for the galaxy? Or his friends? 

Did it really have to be one or the other?

_Yoda has to be wrong about this. I know he's been right about everything before, but-- he can't be right about this. He just--can't be._

He thought of Owen and Beru, how they were murdered where they stood by Imperial stormtroopers outside the house they'd shared for almost forty years. He hadn't known, when he'd rushed out before breakfast, that it would be the last time he would see them alive. He hadn't been able to save them. 

_If I had known, I could have warned them. They could have hidden - gone out into the desert, gone to Anchorhead, gone into hiding until the danger was over. They would still be alive._ At the time he hadn't realized the true power of the Force--that it could show him the future--but now-- 

Now that he knew, how could Yoda expect him to turn away? 

_Who am I, really?_

He took a deep breath, and another and another. Gradually, his panic subsided as he considered the question. He floated in a calm space, and the edges of of the wall were sharper and more vivid than he'd ever perceived them. 

_I am Luke Skywalker. Jedi Knight-in-training. Student of Yoda and old Ben Kenobi._

He was getting close but it still wasn't right. Weren't the Jedi supposed to be the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy? How could Yoda expect him to be calm -- _passive_ \-- when his friends were suffering? Did he have a heart of stone? 

(Yoda clearly regretted his comrades' deaths, but he hadn't sought to avenge them. He'd gone into exile instead. Would Luke have done the same?)

And then the answer blossomed in his mind like a thousand-petaled udambara flower in the Yavin jungle (that only opened at twilight), and he was filled with a deep, abiding calm. 

_"Do you know who you are?"_ Yoda had asked him. 

_I am someone who helps my friends, no matter what the cost._

_I don't want to live in a universe without them._

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. 

He took a deep breath, as if he were perched on the edge of a vast abyss and about to fall. He was suspended among the clouds and it was a long, long way to fall--

He blinked, abruptly back in his body. The way before him was clear and he knew now exactly what he had to do. 

It may not have been the answer Yoda was seeking, but it was good enough.


	8. Chapter 8

He didn't wait for dawn. As soon as the rain slowed to a manageable trickle, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and eased himself out of the hut to where Artoo was waiting in low-power mode outside. 

It was too cramped in Yoda's little hut, so he didn't have much: a few dirty coveralls, a handful of ration bars, and a water bottle. He doubted he'd need them where he was going, but it didn't seem fair to his teacher to leave the place a mess - the circumstances were strained enough as it was. Luke had spent so much time cleaning at this point that it had become almost second nature to leave no trace. 

_I really have changed,_ he thought absently. He hadn't been a slob before, exactly - fighter pilots had to keep their in gear reasonable order lest a skirmish end badly when shit inevitably hit the fan and equipment failed - but Yoda made the even the rigorously organized Alliance quartermasters look sloppy. Of course, it was easier when you didn't actually own much besides a few ragged robes and some battered stew pots, and all your "furniture" was literally built into the walls. 

The only items of real importance were his blaster and his father's lightsaber, which were strapped to the utility belt around his waist. Yoda was dismissive of Luke's weapons, but Luke couldn't imagine going against the Empire - especially if Vader was involved - without them. 

"Artoo, wake up," Luke said, rapping the droid's rounded dome. Artoo's sensors flashed red as the droid came out of hibernation. "And be quiet. We need to get to the ship right away."

A tentative, muffled beep. 

"I need your help to get us ready for takeoff. Han and Leia need our help." 

Under more pleasant circumstances, the droid's startled reaction would have been hilarious. As it was, not even Artoo's unmitigated glee could ease Luke's grimness. 

"Shh. I told you, we have to be quiet." 

Several problems with the unfolding scenario occurred to Artoo, and he shared them with Luke. 

"Yes, I'm serious. We're definitely leaving." Luke shook his head as if flicking away unwanted insects. "And no, Yoda doesn't know yet."

A pause. A _very diplomatic_ question. Artoo might not like Yoda, but he was no fool. 

"I'll tell him before we leave. Come on, let's go." 

***

His flight suit was in surprisingly good shape, considering that he'd soaked it in swamp water in his first few minutes on the planet, and getting anything to dry in this humidity was a nightmare. (He'd given up on laundry after the first attempt mouldered and a dull grey lizard with razor-sharp spikes along its tail chewed holes in the second.) After so much time wearing only coveralls and sleeveless shirts, made with more breathable rikin-fiber, it felt strange to wear his shockingly orange uniform again, with its the long pants and synthetic sleeves. 

His skin underneath the fabric was clammy, and his legs were slick with sweat, but he forced himself to keep going. Things would be better when he was hooked into the shipboard system with its custom atmospheric controls and life support. 

Still, despite his misery, wearing the suit made him feel more confident in his decisions, more like the old Commander Skywalker - someone who was used to giving orders rather than taking them. After all, his current mission might differ in the particulars, but it wasn't _that_ different from some of the sneak attacks he'd led on Imperial supply depots. He'd plenty of rescues before for captured spies and compromised operatives, both in the air and on the ground. He could do this, too. 

(He'd just never knowingly gone up against someone like Vader before, that's all. Someone powerful in the Force, and bent on opposing him. 

Someone who might be waiting for him even now...)

Since he wasn't in a hangar with a vacuum tube, getting Artoo up to his usual spot behind the cockpit was quite the a challenge. Eventually, Luke used the Force - it took several tries, but it was easier than hauling the droid up the the ladder by hand, and a lot faster, too. Aside from a few nervous whistles from Artoo when Luke's control wobbled, he managed to complete the task without incident. 

Success. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He'd come such a long way in such a short time. 

And it still might not be enough to help Han and Leia. And if Yoda was right, his failure might doom them all. 

He pushed the unpleasant thoughts aside. He'd made his choice and there was no room for second-guessing himself - it wouldn't help, and might even hurt him later on. He might be stupid and foolish for doing this - certainly Yoda wasn't going to be happy with him - but he knew he couldn't stand aside and let fate takes its course. For better or worse, he would intervene and do what he could to help his friends. 

The supply trunks were easy to pack, though he was less than precise about returning every item to its original location. He'd been tempted to leave it all here for his return, but didn't know what conditions he would face, aside from the fact that his ultimate destination was a city. He wasn't sure how long it would take him to get there or how many stops he might have to make on the way. 

Though he had to admit, it was a relief to know he was returning to civilization at last. Even if this unknown city in the clouds was crude and terrible, it would be several steps up from the primitive conditions on Dagobah. There might be food that wasn't ration bars or cooked over an open fire. There might be light and laughter, rather than silence. His clothing might stay properly dry. There would even - and this was exciting - be the possibility of a real shower again.

The X-wing was equipped with certain mechanisms to ensue pilot sanitation on long-distance flights, but it just wasn't the same. He couldn't _wait_ to get back in a 'fresher again and wash the sweat and grime of his training away. It was yet another reason to hurry up and get out of here. 

He got the trunks packed and ready to load in the underside storage bay, and set up the flight ladder so he could reach the cockpit. Lifting Artoo was one thing, but he wasn't quite ready to try it with himself yet, especially since he suspected there would be an audience for his departure.

After that, there were still a few tweaks to work out before it was safe to take off. Artoo's repairs on the X-wing were nothing short of heroic, but Luke wasn't taking the ship out of atmosphere until he'd personally confirmed that all of systems were in working order. He wouldn't be much good to Han and Leia if he got himself spaced thirty seconds out of Dagobah because there were still water damage in the thrusters or swamp weeds jammed in the oxygen couplings. 

_If Yoda hadn't lifted the ship out, I'd still be stuck here. I would have seen Han and Leia suffer, and not been able to do anything about it except stay here and train, just the way he wants me to. Funny how life works._

_Bet he regrets that particular lesson now._

He felt a pang at the thought of Yoda's inevitable disappointment, and pushed it down, just as he'd done with his fear and pessimism a few minutes earlier. He summoned the calm resolve he'd discovered in his meditation, and let it sweep through him, pushing back the fear and anxiety. 

_This is what I need to do,_ he reminded himself. _I can't sit back and do nothing if I want to be true to who I really am._

Unfortunately, that didn't mean there wouldn't be any regrets. Or casualties, for that matter. It didn't mean a guaranteed happy ending for everyone, and it didn't mean that his teacher would be pleased with him. 

Yoda's good opinion had come to mean a great deal to Luke over the course of his training. Despite Luke's early fantasies, he wasn't looking forward to parting ways - especially not like this. But he'd made his choice, and he would accept the consequences. How could he expect to face a man like Darth Vader if he couldn't even manage to look Yoda - little, wizened, surprisingly forceful and intimidating Yoda - in the eye as he departed? 

He hoped his calm and certainty wouldn't evaporate when he was facing Yoda. 

He hoped he wouldn't lose his nerve. 

***

Most of the flight checks passed Luke's critical inspections, but something still wasn't right. He was jacking Artoo into the ship's computer with a jump cable for another round of troubleshooting when he felt a twinge running through the Force. Yoda. It had to be. 

Luke took a deep breath to steady himself as Yoda came slowly out of the mist. He didn't know what to expect - whether their confrontation would be brutal and swift, or drawn-out and heated - but one thing was absolutely certain. This was going to suck. 

He was relieved that his teacher had waited until now to make an appearance. It would be much easier if he and Artoo could leave as soon as the conversation was over. He didn't want any awkward lingering or reproving glances after all was said and done. 

Things were going to be awkward enough as they were without making it worse.

But he'd given his word to Yoda that he would complete the training, and now he was leaving prematurely. The least he could do was give Yoda an explanation. Yoda had to understand that this was important. Han and Leia were in danger. Luke couldn't sit back and let them _die_. 

_This isn't about me not wanting to finish my training. This isn't about my personal dislike for this planet. This is about my friends. I won't be able to live with myself if they die, and I didn't do anything about it--_

_What's the use of these powers if you don't use them to SAVE PEOPLE when you have a chance? When the Force shows it to me, no less?_

There must be a reason the Force had shown him these visions. It must be - as corny as it sounded - his destiny. Surely Yoda must know that! 

Luke scrabbled back down across the side of the ship, bracing himself with the flight ladder as he reached in the cockpit to fiddle with Artoo's connection to the ship's computer. He deliberately didn't look at Yoda, waiting for his teacher to make the first move. 

"Luke! You must complete the training!" Yoda didn't shout. He didn't need to shout. He simply--projected. Even from up in the X-wing, Luke could hear him as clearly as if they were side-by-side in the hut together. 

Luke sighed. "I can't keep the vision out of my head, they're my friends, I've got to help them," he said in a rush, as all of the clever arguments he'd rehearsed endlessly in his head evaporated. The deep sense of certainty vanished, and the restless energy that had seized him yesterday was back. 

He knew he was speaking too fast. He was too emotional, in danger of losing all his self-control. His head ached. He hadn't slept since he'd seen that awful Force vision had shattered his world, and he knew he wasn't at his best right now. 

Well, he'd sleep when they were in hyperspace. Nothing exciting ever happened in hyperspace. He just had to get through this first. 

It was so simple. Why couldn't Yoda see it? Why couldn't he understand? 

"You must. Not. Go." The weight of Yoda's _presence_ \--already considerable--expanded exponentially. As in their training exercises, the air thickened and Luke felt his motions slow and stiffen. 

No. Oh, no. He couldn't fail. Not here. Not now. 

_"When you know who you are, struggle you will not."_

_I am someone who helps my friends, I am someone who helps my friends--_

Luke's mantra - aided by a healthy dose of anger and fear -- punched through the tension. He was able to clamber down the ladder and face Yoda directly without any further interference. "But Han and Leia will die if I don't!" he hissed. 

"You don't know that," a familiar voice said out of the air and the ghostly form of Obi-wan Kenobi, dressed in the same robes he'd worn on the day he'd died at Vader's hands, appeared next to Yoda. "Even Yoda cannot see their fate." 

Ben's image was significantly more solid now than the last time he'd appeared to Luke on Hoth. Luke wasn't sure if that was due to his increased skill with the Force or because he'd been so delirious with shock and hypothermia at the time. 

Luke took a step forward. Ben had always helped him, comforted him, guided him. Ben would support him now. "But I can help them!" he insisted. "I _feel_ the Force--" 

"But you cannot control it," Ben said. 

Ben's words slammed into Luke, leaving him reeling. He leaned against the ship, unable to meet his mentor's eyes. It only hurt so much because it was true. He was nowhere near the level he needed to be and he knew it. 

He was still missing things, slipping up, making stupid mistakes. He shouldn't have dropped Artoo and those boxes yesterday just because he was startled. He still wasn't sure he could lift the X-wing even knowing it was possible. He'd had some successes here and there, but were those really enough to take on Vader? 

Ben had fought Vader one-on-one and Vader had killed him-- and Ben had significantly more experience than Luke--

Sensing Luke's weakness, Ben pressed his advantage. "This is a dangerous time for you, when you will be tempted by the Dark Side of the Force." He was so calm, so reasonable, so _right_. It was infuriating. 

He'd planned facing down Yoda's resistance, but Ben's unexpected appearance -- and disapproval -- caught him off-guard and he was unable to summon any argument. 

Damn him. Damn Yoda. Damn them all. Couldn't they _see_ how important this was? How much he'd grown?

"Yes, yes. To Obi-wan you listen!" Yoda said. 

Luke stared. Had Yoda put Ben up to this somehow? _Does Yoda know how much I always wished Ben was still my teacher--has he known this entire time how much I hated working with him--_

"The cave," Yoda crooned. "The cave. Remember your failure at the cave!" 

That was so unfair, to bring up the cave _now_ , after all this time-- 

"But I've learned so much since then--" Luke lunged for the open panel he spotted on the ship's underside, fiddled with some switches so he wouldn't have look at either of his teachers. "Master Yoda, I _promise_ to return and finish what I've begun, you have my word--" 

He was speaking too fast and he knew it. Words weren't enough, words were so flimsy and useless here. Words didn't convey his feelings and they couldn't erase the disappointment in Yoda's eyes. 

Couldn't they understand how hard this was for _Luke_? 

"It is you and your abilities the Emperor wants. That is why your friends are made to suffer," Ben said, with the placid, insufferable equanimity of the dead. 

So Luke's fears were true, and the Han and Leia were being tortured because of him-- 

It was not a pleasant confirmation, but if Ben were hoping to dissuade him, it backfired spectacularly. The memory of his vision of Han and Leia grounded him, brought him back to that quiet, inward certainty. _My friends are part of who I am. They've shaped me so much--I can't abandon them now._

He brought his head back out of the panel to face them. "That's why I have to go," he said. 

No excuses. No second-guessing. Just a simple statement of fact. 

He kept his words steady, but his thoughts were rushing at lightspeed. _This is my fault, I brought this on them, they're in danger because of me, and I have to fix this--I have to fix this--!_

He dove back into the panel. There was one last adjustment that needed to be made, and then he could close it up and move on-- 

"Luke, I don't want to lose you to the Emperor the way I lost Vader," Ben said. There was a story in those words that Luke desperately needed to hear--a subtle plea mixed in with the affection--but not today. Not right now. He couldn't afford any more delays.

He ground himself back in that elusive certainty he'd discovered, let it fill every fiber of his being. _If I know who I am, I cannot be turned. The Dark Side draws on anger, hatred, fear - not-knowing. If I know who I am, how can I be afraid?_. He just had to hold onto that knowledge and not get caught up in his own negative emotions. 

He stepped back out of the panel, drawing on that sense of certainty as he faced his teachers again and poured everything he had into two simple words. He couldn't keep from smiling a little as he shook his head. "You won't." 

_You won't lose me, Ben. You told me to trust my feelings, and that's exactly what I'm doing now. It was the right thing to do in the battle against the Death Star--why is it wrong now?_

"Stopped they must be. On this all depends," said Yoda, clearly not convinced by Luke's declaration. _You are still not ready!_ was not spoken aloud, but Luke knew what he was thinking. 

As Yoda spoke, Luke darted around, checking for any reptiles lingering in the cracks and crevices around the repulsor engines. He really didn't want anything jamming up the works when he took off, and there were usually at least one snake curled up behind the motor gears. He reached his right hand in and rooted around in the darkness, finger tips outstretched--

He felt cool, glossy scales under his fingertips a second before the snake bit him. 

He started, but managed not to cry out. _Fucking snakes--can I just get these motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking ship and get off this motherfucking planet and GO--_

He grappled the snake with his injured hand, just far enough that he could bring his other hand to bear and pull it out into the light, breathing hard against the pain. He knew from bitter experience that the black-and-white ones weren't poisonous, but his hand was going to swell up for the next several hours and ache for days afterward. 

Of course, Yoda wasn't done. "Only a fully trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his emperor." 

Luke bent and let the snake go underneath ship. _Good riddance,_ he thought with a snarl as the snake vanished into the undergrowth. He began loading his last few items into the underside cargo bay - checking it again for any more unwanted stowaways before he slammed it shut.

"If you end your training now," Yoda continued. "If you chose the quick and easy path, as Vader did--you will become an agent of evil." 

_How is this the EASY path?_ Luke wanted to scream. _This is nothing like Vader--I am NOTHING like Vader--how--_

"Patience!" Ben huffed in agreement. 

The word flew like a grenade and exploded. Luke whirled and gripped the flight ladder, unable to hide his agitation any longer. "And sacrifice Han and Leia?" he spat. 

_Is that what you're asking of me? Are their deaths the price I must pay for completing my training on your terms?_

"If you honor what they fight for--" Yoda drew himself up on his toes. "Yes." 

And there it was. The battle lines were drawn and there was no going back now. 

He'd wanted desperately to become a Jedi like his father, to master the ways of the Force and use his abilities to help restore freedom to the galaxy. He'd sweated and toiled and suffered under Yoda's instructions, all for the sake of this. He'd failed over and over again, and kept getting back up every time. 

And yet-- when it came down to this latest test-- he chose to fail. Because his skills and his abilities weren't worth the deaths of the people he cared about more than anything else in the world. 

What good was it to become a Jedi if other people had to die on your behalf? 

(He hadn't asked Ben Kenobi to die, he would have saved Ben if he could--)

What good was it to become a Jedi if it meant that you were alone, like Yoda, in exile on a backwater planet on the outer reaches of the galaxy? 

He could see from their grim expressions that they knew his mind was set. Of course they knew. 

"Luke, if you choose to Vader you will do it alone. I cannot interfere," Ben said evenly. As if he hadn't constantly interfered in Luke's life whenever he damn well pleased since his violent death three years ago. 

Luke closed his eyes, shaking his head. He hadn't really expected anything else, but it still hurt to hear. After all, it was Ben who had gotten him off the Death Star--helped him at the Battle of Yavin--guided him to Dagobah to continue his training. He wouldn't be here without Ben, and it had been comforting to know that Ben was looking out for him, even when all hope seemed lost. 

Now he was alone. Truly alone, in a way he had not been for a long time. 

"I understand," He tried to keep his voice steady, but he was inwardly furious. This wasn't fair. None of this was fair. Why did they have to hurt him like this? Even if they disagreed with his decision, why couldn't they support him--guide him-- _understand_ him--

His head ached. His hand ached. His heart ached. _Why does everything have to hurt so much?_

He wished he could curl up and sleep and make everything go away. 

He forced himself up. Yoda's eyes were wide and there was an expression Luke had never seen on his face -- disappointment, yes, and hurt, but also something that looked distressingly like concern for Luke's welfare--

_As if I'm already dead. Already lost. Already gone._

_As if he's alone again. As if he's lost all hope._

Luke swallowed, but kept his gaze steady. He couldn't alleviate Yoda's pain, but he could at least bear witness to it. 

_I'm so sorry, Master Yoda. I have to do this._

_I cannot let this go and still be ME_.

While Luke had been confronting his teachers, Artoo had resolved the last systems check and nestled himself safely in the astromech niche behind the cockpit. Good. They were ready to go, then. "Artoo?" 

A cheerful, affirmative whistle. 

"Fire up the convertors." He climbed slowly up the ladder to the X-wing's cockpit, weary and drained. As he settled into the cockpit and pulled his helmet over his head, there was a hiss as the engines began to turn and the flight ladder folded up behind him. 

"Luke!" Ben's ghost threw up his hands, more agitated than Luke had ever seen him -- in life or in death. "Don't give into hate! That leads to the Dark Side!" 

Yoda hobbled forward, leaning heavily on his staff, small and old and broken in a way Luke had never seen before. His shoulders were hunched, and he stared down at the ground, as if Luke had defeated him. He coughed twice before catching his breath again. 

"Strong is Vader! Mind what you have learned! Save you, it can!" Yoda cried as the X-wing's convertors roared to life. Normally, Luke wouldn't have been able to hear anything, but whatever amplification trick his teacher used was strong enough to cut over the noise. 

It was one last gift for a headstrong, impetuous student who didn't deserve it. 

He knew he'd hurt Yoda, and it pained him. He didn't want to hurt anyone. But he didn't have any choice, not if Han and Leia's lives were at stake. 

He knew what it cost Yoda to say those words, to not leave on a note of anger. So he gave his teacher the only thing he could - a reassurance. 

"I will. And I'll return. I promise."

His credibility wasn't great, since he'd also promised to complete the training - but he wasn't quitting. He was just taking a break. Once Han and Leia were out of danger, he would return and finish everything, just as Yoda wanted-- 

_And I also made promises to Han and Leia, too. We promised to protect each other. Doesn't that count for anything?_

The X-wing's cockpit lid closed automatically as the ship took off. Then they were airborne and the ground fell away. He lost sight of Yoda and Ben among the dense shadows of the trees. A few seconds later, the ship went through they cloud layer, and everything vanished in a monotonous sea of grey.

He'd spent so long yearning for the day when he could end his training and leave Dagobah at last. And yet--that day had come, but it didn't look like how he'd imagined it. It was hollow. Empty. Broken. 

He hoped Yoda would be all right while he was gone. 

***

It was good to be in space again. He'd missed the wide-open vistas, the vast emptiness broken up in a spangled sea of stars. He was a desert boy, born to long, clear views, not the vaguely claustrophobic closeness of eternal fog. 

It was good to fly again. Good to be free. And yet strange, too. He remembered where everything was in the X-wing, of course, but there was a creaky unfamiliarity to everything after so much time in Yoda's routine. He'd adjust - of course he would adjust - but it would just take time to get used to everything in the outside world again. 

Hopefully by the time they reached their destination, he'd be ready for anything. 

The monitor readout pinged as the ship settled into a comfortable orbit around Dagobah. It was Artoo, informing Luke that based on his vague and imprecise description, the most likely candidate for the city in his vision was in the Bespin system, only a short distance from Hoth. The few blurry visuals that paraded on the monitor seemed to match Luke's vision perfectly, especially the distance shots of the planet's only port of note. 

It was even called "Cloud City". _How imaginative,_ Luke thought. 

It would take a few days and several hyperspace jumps to get there. The trip would be cramped and uncomfortable compared to a frigate or even a freighter like the _Millenium Falcon_ , but he'd done it before. The life support systems were working fine, so he had oxygen aplenty, not to mention automatic hydration, CO2 recycling and waste elimination. He had ration bars aplenty. He'd be fine. 

"Okay, good," he said aloud. "We'll go to the Bespin system, then. Let's get ready to make the first jump. I'm turning controls over to you." 

He normally handled this sort of navigation himself, but he didn't trust himself with calculations when his mind was this fuzzy. He was tired and sore, emotionally and physically exhausted, and he desperately needed to rest so he could think clearly about what he was going to do when they arrived at Bespin. 

Bespin. Where Vader was waiting for him. Torturing Luke's friends, and very possibly killing them if he didn't get there in time. 

He hoped he wasn't already too late. He couldn't get there any faster without pushing the X-wing's hyperdrive past the breaking point, and that was too risky, even for him. 

A distant, ironic, echo of the very first day of his training came back to him. _"I'm not afraid,"_ he'd said. 

_"You will be."_ Yoda had promised. _"You will be."_

And now he was. Perhaps not in the way that Yoda had intended, but now that he was on his way, it was safe to admit his fear, to expose it for what it was rather than trying to bury it inside him. Cold dread trickled down his spine as he remembered his terror at his vision of Vader in the cave - and the even more unsettling revelation that Luke might become Vader in turn. It was not an especially good omen. 

But he wouldn't let his fear stop him from doing the right thing. His teachers might be right that this was foolish and dangerous, and he wasn't ready, and yet-- he couldn't let their doubts stop him. 

_I wish Yoda had let me work with my lightsaber, though._ He'd managed to face off against a Wampa, back on Hoth, and with Vader's simulacrum in the cave, but he felt desperately unprepared for the real thing. He'd used his lightsaber on and off in combat, as the situation called for it - usually as a tool rather than a weapon - but never against a skilled fighter of Vader's caliber. 

What else could he do if Vader attacked him? He didn't think his blaster would be of much use. And Luke wasn't sure how to use the Force as a weapon, or if that was necessarily a good idea - wouldn't that lead him directly to the Dark Side? 

Sleep. He desperately needed sleep. His eyes were closing of their own accord and he wasn't thinking straight. "Artoo, wake me if something comes up, okay?" 

The little droid beeped an acknowledgement, even as he initiated the first jump. 

As the stars streaked to blurs, Luke settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and then another, waiting for exhaustion to claim him. He reached for the calm, still place he'd found in his meditation, but it kept slipping out of his grasp. Plans kept swirling in his head, but he forced them away with difficulty. Later. He'd figured it all out later. 

Everything would be clearer once he'd had a chance to sleep. The last day or so had been complete hell, but things would get better soon. He'd make sure of that. 

He hoped he wouldn't dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we end! Who knew I had 30,000 words worth of Luke Skywalker feels in me? Thanks for joining me on this crazy-long journey of exploration! I appreciate everyone who's taken the time to leave kudos or comments and I'm glad this fic has brightened your day a bit. 
> 
> (Oh, and if anyone was curious, yes, that was a _Snakes on a Plane_ joke there at the end. But if you watch Luke's departure scene in _The Empire Strikes Back_ , you'll find there is, actually a snake in one of the engines and I didn't make that up.)


End file.
